Midland-ACS announces that a wide range of its actuator control valve products have undergone third-party assessment to the IEC 61508 functional safety standard, and are now certified to support safety integrity level (SIL ) 3 capability. Control valves with this high level of safety integrity are increasingly being specified by process industries to protect personnel and plant, by ensuring fail-safe operation of critical functions such as emergency shutdown. According to the company:
- By using SIL3 capable stainless steel valves and actuation controls, designers of safety instrumented systems are able to more easily comply with the risk reduction requirements of the IEC 61508 and 61511 technical safety standards.
- The first tranche of products to receive SIL3 capability status includes direct-acting solenoid and pilot operated poppet valves, pilot operated spool valves, and a number of pilot-operated and direct-acting solenoid hydraulic valves for use in ballast-control systems.
- All variants of Midland-ACS’ 70 Series direct-acting solenoid 3/2 poppet valves are now certified in accordance with IEC 61508 to have SIL3 support capability.
- The standard temperature service versions of pilot-operated 3/2 spool valves from Midland-ACS’ 1500 and 1600 Series also now support SIL3 capability.
- Many Midland-ACS hydraulic valve products for ballast control systems are also now certified for SIL3 capability, including the DN5, DN10 and DN15 Series pilot-operated valves, as well as the DN3 Series direct-acting solenoid valves.
- All Midland-ACS products certified to SIL3 capability are supplied complete with copies of the Sira certification, which contains all the information that engineers and designers need to calculate the safety integrity level of the complete system, based on its component parts.
