How Can Wetted Materials Affect Your Application?

What are wetted materials, and how should they influence your valve selection? Clippard's Electronic Valves Product Manager Mike Kettering explains what you need to know.

Video filmed at Clippard in Cincinnati, Ohio

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, I'm Mike Kettering, Product Manager for Electronic Valves at Clippard. Today, we're going to talk about wetted materials. What are wetted materials, and how should they influence my valve selection? Here's my definition.

Wetted materials are any materials in the system that come in contact with the media flowing through the application. If it's a simple valve we're discussing, wetted materials include the seal material, the body material, and the spring material—or the material of any other component that comes into contact with the media. Some valves, like pinch valves, may only have one wetted material, which is the tube itself.

A common question I hear is, how can wetted materials affect my application? Every application is different. Understanding the requirements of the application is imperative in selecting the proper wetted material. Some of the common drivers for selecting materials include chemical compatibility and minimum or maximum temperature the component will see.

An example application where chemical compatibility is required would be dispensing of alcohols, reagents, or let's say acetone. Since these chemicals can be rather aggressive media, you want to make sure that the wetted materials will last the intended service life of the product. An example of the importance of wetted materials and temperature compatibility could be a mobile application where a valve is subject to -40˚ temperatures in Alaska one month, and 110˚ in Nevada the next month. An example of a special media application could be in analyzing where the media passing through the valve is going to be tested. If the valve's wetted materials offgas, they can render the test void.

So again, wetted material is the material that comes into contact with the gas or liquid that's flowing through the component. And remember, Clippard offers a wide selection of materials to meet the needs of many different types of demanding applications.

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