Chemical industry
1、 Due to the increasingly fierce competition in the global valve market, many world-famous valve manufacturers have closed their factories in North America, Europe and Japan and transferred to China, India, South Korea and central Europe to reduce the manufacturing cost of valves and increase sales profits. With the increase of China's efforts to develop and utilize oil and natural gas, China's valve market has increased significantly, which makes most valve manufacturers pay more attention to building factories in China. As a result, there has been an upsurge of foreign valve enterprises to build factories in China, and some enterprises even have multiple factories in China to shorten the transportation distance and delivery time. In 2004, the American Valve Association announced that the domestic valve market share in the United States reached US $3.18 billion; According to the data of China General Machinery Association, China's valve market has exceeded 20billion yuan. By 2010, China's domestic valve demand will reach 34.5 billion yuan. The sales volume of various valves in the global market is about US $40billion. According to the statistics of China, there are more than 2000 valve manufacturers, plus more than 1400 valve manufacturers in other developed and developing countries, accounting for 80% of the global market share; More than 10 other valve consortiums account for 20% of the global market share. There are many kinds of valves and a wide range of applications. The oil and natural gas industry has always been the largest purchaser in the valve market. Figure 1 shows the consumption of valves in various fields. From Figure 2, we can see that oil (including oil refining) and natural gas are the most used, accounting for 37.4% of the total; The consumption of valves in the field of energy is 21.3%; The third place is the chemical industry, with 11.5%; Followed by water treatment and sewage treatment, 11.4%. The valve market is affected by the oil and gas industry.
2、 Development of main markets of valves 1. There are many planned and expanded oil projects in the oil and gas industry in North America and some developed countries. In addition, because people pay more and more attention to environmental protection and the state has established environmental protection regulations, the refinery established many years ago must be rebuilt. Therefore, in the next few years, the funds invested in oil development and refining will continue to grow. The construction of long-distance oil and gas pipelines in China and long-distance pipelines in Russia in the future will directly promote the growth of the valve market in the oil industry. As shown in Figure 2, according to the long-term development of the oil and gas development and transmission valve market, it is predicted that the demand for valves in oil and gas development and transmission will increase from US $8.2 billion in 2002 to US $14billion in 2005. 2. For a long time, the demand for valves in the energy industry has maintained a solid and stable growth rate. The total power generation of thermal power stations and nuclear power stations built in the world is 2679030mw, that of the United States is 743391mw, and that of new power station projects in other countries in the world is 780000mw, which will increase by 40% in the next few years. The energy markets in Europe, South America, Asia, especially China, will become new growth points in the valve market. From 2002 to 2005, the demand for valve products in the energy market will rise from US $5.2 billion to US $6.9 billion, with an average annual growth of 9.3%, as shown in Figure 3. 3. Chemical industry with an output value of more than 1.5 trillion US dollars, the chemical industry ranks first in the industry and is also one of the largest demand markets for valves. The chemical industry needs industrial valves with mature design, high processing quality and rare materials. In recent years, the competition in the chemical industry market has become extremely fierce, and many chemical manufacturers have to cut costs. However, from 2003 to 2004, the output value and profits of the chemical industry doubled, and the demand for valve products ushered in a new peak in the past 30 years. As shown in Figure 4, after 2005, the demand for valve products in the chemical industry will increase at an annual growth rate of 5%.
3、 The influence of oil and gas industry on valve technology although the range of valve products involved in the development and transmission of oil and natural gas has basically not changed in the past century, valve manufacturers have been constantly updating valve technology and actively responding to the changes in the oil and gas industry market. If you want to remain ahead of the market or not be left behind, valve manufacturers should constantly update the technology and process of valve design, manufacturing, service and sales. The fact is that oil companies have more and more requirements for valve manufacturers: on the basis of providing reasonable prices, advanced valve manufacturers must be good at solving the problems faced by oil companies, and extend the performance of valve products and provide more service capabilities under the condition of worse working environment and stricter environmental protection requirements.
(1) The demand for oil and natural gas in the world market of metal seals is growing rapidly, and the footprint of developing crude oil has also traveled all over the earth. The extraction of crude oil puts forward new requirements for equipment. For example, ultra deep well technology poses challenges of ultra-low temperature and ultra-high pressure to equipment. The extraction of ultra heavy crude oil is a profitable option, especially when crude oil reaches $30 per barrel. At present, high concentration of asphaltene and other impurities have caused difficulties in the transportation and processing of crude oil. Usually, the soft seal ball valve used in oil pipeline can not meet the requirements of working conditions, which requires the valve manufacturer to develop metal seal ball valve, which can adapt to the changes of temperature and pressure, and even ensure absolute sealing when transporting solid media (hydroxide, coke, etc.). Metal sealing technology benefits from the development of surface spraying technology. Valve manufacturers hope to use this technology to maintain a leading position in the market and include spraying technology in their development strategy. They cooperate with research institutes and universities to develop the next generation of "super hard" coatings.
(2) Anti "explosion decompression" in 2002, API standard API6D stipulated that valve products with a design pressure higher than asmeclass600 must be designed to prevent "explosion decompression". Explosion decompression refers to the phenomenon that when the pressure in the valve drops rapidly, the CO2 infiltrated into the seal due to the high pressure expands rapidly due to the pressure reduction, resulting in seal explosion and fracture during the valve closing process, resulting in valve failure. An oil company found the valve explosion decompression phenomenon for the first time on the deep-sea platform. After the valve failed, the company had to stop operation and replace the valve for several weeks, resulting in heavy losses. Since then, oil companies have required that the high-pressure valves provided by valve manufacturers must be equipped with anti "explosion and pressure reduction" configuration. Soon, valve manufacturers responded quickly and developed anti "explosion decompression" seals and anti "explosion decompression" valves to meet stringent environmental requirements.
(3) The corrosion of sour crude oil and the rising crude oil price make refining companies focus on sour crude oil. The investment in the development of sour crude oil market is profitable, and it also has a price competitive advantage in long-term supply contracts. However, sour crude oil contains H2S and other corrosive media, which poses new challenges to the corrosion resistance of equipment. Valve manufacturers can provide materials permitted by iso15156, and also provide test data (according to iso15156) to prove the corrosion resistance and long life of valve materials. The end user will list these valve manufacturers in the list of corrosion-resistant valve suppliers.
(4) Fugitive emissions iso15848 stipulates the requirements for the design of valve fugitive emissions. The manufacturer redesigned the packing and sealing arrangement of ordinary valves and special valves to adapt to the updated standards. However, the new standard is too general and strict, so many oil companies have formulated their own emission standards. For example, many North American companies refer to the provisions of api622 standard. The further improvement of the valve fugitive emission standard requires the cooperation of valve manufacturers, users and standard makers, learn from each other's experience and solve it together.
(5) In pursuit of economic benefits, many oil refining enterprises are overloaded due to premature wear and equipment fatigue. The result is endless expansion of production equipment and transformation of systems. The expectation of the enterprise for the equipment greatly exceeds the original intention of the design, which requires the valve manufacturer to take precautions and actively participate in the work of users to avoid the adverse effects of unreasonable design in the production process on the reliability, service life and safety of the valve. For example, valves used in thermal cycle systems are easy to cause thermal fatigue of parts. Valve manufacturers with industrial process experience will reasonably arrange valves to reduce the possibility of problems.
(6) Preventive maintenance in order to ensure production, oil enterprises require to arrange equipment maintenance cycle. With the development of valve test system, electronic hardware and software, the preventive maintenance of valves has changed from an intelligent concept to reality. A small number of valve manufacturers who are proficient in automatic control provide data analysis systems to quantify the valve operation process and provide preventive maintenance time for valves.
(7) Automatic actuator refining process automation is the general trend, and the control technology in the middle has developed for a long time. The valve manufacturer shall install automatic actuator on the valve to meet the requirements of automatic control production. The technology of automatic actuator has been greatly developed. On the other hand, manufacturers that produce actuators also provide users with valve products installed with actuators. Therefore, the trend of the integration of actuator and valve poses a challenge to a single manufacturer. After all, users want to find an enterprise to solve the problem more easily and avoid wrangling.
(8) Pipeline ball valve natural gas transportation pipeline engineering is a very large and potential market for valves. The monitoring of long-distance pipelines is very important. Some companies have developed intelligent devices that users can use to detect pipelines. For example, "smartpig" technology. This robot can detect the thickness of the pipe wall and even corrosion spots. However, the detection device has requirements for the diameter of the pipeline, so the diameter ball valve has become the preferred product of long-distance pipeline companies. On the other hand, the long-distance pipeline requires the valve wall thickness to be as thin as possible, and the valve material has high yield toughness and corrosion resistance to meet the requirements of pipeline expansion, steering and regional environmental changes. The most important point is that the managers of long-distance pipelines require that the service life of the purchased valves must be longer than that of the pipeline itself.