Reliable Pressure Safety Valve Testing
Don Horne
Companies use pressure relief or safety valves to protect equipment from pressure spikes. Because of their importance, checking or calibrating these valves is critical, but creating a consistent test result is difficult, as two technicians may interpret the analog test gauge differently.
Crystal has a solution with its XP2i Digital Pressure Gauge. The XP2i features a special PSV mode designed to test pressure safety and relief valves. Once the valve opens, the XP2i detects the pressure drop and displays the maximum pressure that the gauge ever reached before the drop. This value remains on the display until the technician clears it. Rather than two technicians possibly reporting different values when the analog gauge spikes, with the XP2i both technicians would write the same value, even to a thousandth of a psi.
The XP2i Digital Pressure Gauge features three accuracy levels to choose from, 0.1 per cent of reading, 0.05 per cent of full scale, or 0.02 per cent of full scale. They are available in ranges from vacuum to 15,000 psi and are fully temperature compensated from –10 to 50 C. All versions are ATEX, IECEx, and CSA intrinsically safe, making them ideal for the oil & gas industry and others requiring intrinsic safety. An optional datalogging upgrade allows the XP2i to collect and store up to 32,000 data points and easily download the results to a spreadsheet or protected pdf file.
