Sampling Valves Company

Sampling valve is one of the most significant components in the sampler system, which must meet specific requirement as follows. Firstly, it must have bidirectional sealing capability under high pressure, because any leakage before or after sampling is not allowable for the sake of sample purity and gas-tight. Also, the valve should be extremely resistant to decay since the flow media is hot chloride-rich acidic fluids. At last, the materials of the sample valve can’t contaminate the samples

The Sampling Valves Company is presently triggered by the ram on the submersible's manipulator. Considering the valve stroke is much shorter than the ram stroke, a trigger mechanism is especially designed for the sample valve. The trigger mechanism utilizes an incline on the slide block to move the poppet, which magnifies the valve stroke more than 20 times and also decreases the ram force to open the valve. For collecting hydrothermal fluids, the snorkel is inserted into vent. The ram on the submersible's Machiavelli, activated from inside the submersible, acts on the actuating bolt to open the Sampling Valves. Then hydrothermal fluids enter sample chamber through this valve.

After sampling, the push is retracted to close the valve. In this operating course, the Sampling valve utilizes a design of balanced poppet, which is helpful in direct acting times. The two sliding seals and the valve seat, which the poppet seals against, have the same diameter. Eitherports the fluids flow in the valve; all forces on the poppet are nullified by equal and opposite forces. So less force is required to move the poppet, then the ram has to counteract only the return spring force and a tiny friction force made by O-rings that contact with the valve seat.

For the most risky environment of hydrothermal vent, such as high salinity, low pH, high temperature and high pressure the material of sampling valve is critical and strict. So in order to work in such an environment, the Sampling Valves Company is mainly made of 6-aluminum-4-vanadium alloy of titanium (commonly referred to as Ti-6A1-4) because of its high strength, low density and special resistance to corrosion, except the stainless steel spring and poppet. The poppet is made of a high performance thermoplastic "PEEK" which has high machine-driven strength, chemical resistance and biocompatibility.