Bürkert delivers savings and efficiency for new life science

30 April, 2020

Briggs of Burton was appointed by Purolite as the main contractor to design and build additional production facilities consisting of eleven reactor vessels split across nine production areas. Briggs was able to specify the manufacturer of the equipment being installed, (except for the sensors, the supplier for which had already been decided) and chose Bürkert products.

Specialist requirements

The scale of the project meant that the equipment would be located in a range of environments from outdoors to ATEX zone 1. Any valves, sensors or control gear located in potentially explosive atmospheres must be manufactured and certified as well as being installed by suitably qualified engineers.

Having been appraised of the process requirements, Briggs needed process equipment suppliers that could deliver not just the valves but also the 3D CAD drawings and relevant certification to integrate into their overall 3D model. The drawings are essential for the design engineers to finalise the valve locations and ensure that all the equipment will fit into the space available around the vessels.

Briggs initially approached Bürkert for diaphragm valves, but during the discussions about the project, it became apparent that Bürkert would be able to deliver all the process valves they needed. This would include, butterfly, quarter turn, diaphragm and manual valves.

In total, the project needed over 1400 process valves and each one had to be accompanied by certification documents and drawings. The delivery of this information was greatly simplified when Bürkert set up an online resource for Briggs engineers to login and access all the information they required.

Reducing costs

All the automated valves for this project have pilot solenoid valves in the control head, or in the case of the quarter turn valves, located in the switch box on the top of the controller. This made a number of external valve islands and the associated ATEX rated pneumatic control panels redundant, saving the project around £80,000.

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