Sadly, they don’t.
In a diaphragm valve the diaphragm is doing all the work. As you open and close that valve you are stretching and compressing the diaphragm. This, along with the environmental conditions, which usually include temperature changes, cleaning solutions and steam will eventually cause the diaphragm to fail. This is just the nature of a diaphragm.
While, most diaphragms are routinely replaced before they fail, sometimes they fail unexpectedly. If you’ve experienced this you know how frustrating it can be. Not just because of the loss in time and product, but also because you want to know what happened, so it doesn’t happen again.
We reviewed diaphragms that were returned by customers over a 6 year period. They wanted to understand what caused the failure and/or what they could do to increase the life of the diaphragms they used.
These are the categories:
| FAILURE MODE | % OF FAILURES |
|---|---|
| Chemical Incompatibility | 66.7 |
| Seat Failure | 12.8 |
| Actuator seal failure | 10.3 |
| Sticky EPDM | 7.7 |
There’s too much detail to put in this simple blog so, to get all the juicy details, including photos and analysis of specific failures, just sign up below: