The Lee Company has been providing innovative solutions to help customers solve the toughest fluid-control challenges for over 75 years and today offers robust and reliable relief valves in three main varieties.
Firstly, their safety relief valves are designed to be exercised for intermittent ‘pop-off’ applications, while their pressure-regulating valves are intended to operate more continuously with stable performance throughout the operating range.
Finally, thermal relief valves relieve a few droplets of fluid from a trapped volume expanding due to rising temperatures. Each type of valve plays an essential role in downhole oil-tool applications and is manufactured to the required exacting tolerances.
In some applications, such as those involving downhole oil-tool manufacturers, there is the possibility of extreme cracking pressures occurring up to 10,000 psid and beyond.
The Lee Company manufactures 0.281-inch diameter high-pressure relief valves with cracking pressures up to 5,900 psid, so two in series could offer pressure relief as high as 11,800 psid, enabling users to handle double the cracking pressure. This may seem implausible, but once you consider how the valves operate, it becomes clear why it is an ideal solution.
For example, when the first valve just begins to crack open, the pressure is typically not high enough to open the second valve, so the spring will attempt to close it. If the pressure is increased further to the sum of the two valves’ cracking pressures, both valves will open, and each valve will take its own pressure drop across it.
A simple solution, but highly effective — and ideal for customers manufacturing downhole oil tools.
Like all products from The Lee Company, pressure-relief valves are small, lightweight and incredibly durable, capable of serving the entire lifespan of an oil tool. In addition, these products are available in a range of sizes and cracking pressures.
For example, the company offers sizes from 0.187-inch diameter relief valves up to the 0.812-inch threaded line-removable units (LRUs), ensuring proper flow and precise opening pressures to meet the specific needs of an application. Zero-leak options are available for applications in which eliminating any leakage is critical
Two pressure relief valves deliver extra protection
