Chemical Engineering Department

Faculty of Engineering
Process Dynamics and Control
HW. No. 1: Fail close system
Dr. Salah Hamdan. Aljbour
Baha’ AlDeen Amjed AlKhatib
120190414023
Abstract:
In engineering, a fail-safe is a design feature or practice that in
the event of a specific type of failure, inherently responds in a
way that will cause minimal or no harm to other equipment, to
the environment or to people. Unlike inherent safety to a
particular hazard, a system being "fail-safe" does not mean
that failure is impossible or improbable, but rather that the
system's design prevents or mitigates unsafe consequences
of the system's failure, and fail close system is designed based
on this.

Definition:
Air to open valves are normally held closed by the spring and
require air pressure (a control signal) to open them - they open
progressively as the air pressure increases. Air to close valves
are valves which are held open by the valve spring and require
air pressure to move them towards the closed position. The
reason for the two types of valves is to allow failsafe operation.
In the event of a plant instrument air failure, it is important that
all control valves fail in a safe position (e.g. an exothermic
reactor's feed valves (or, perhaps, just one of the valves)
should fail closed (air to open) and its coolant system valves fail
open (air to close)). The type of valve used obviously impacts
on what a controller has to do - changing the type of valve
would mean that the controller would need to move the
manipulation in the opposite direction. To simplify things in this
course we shall assume that we are always using air to open
valves - an increase in control action will cause the valve to
open and the flow through it to increase.
Application:
In water treatment plants, the process involves the treatment
of wastewater consisting of pipes that transfer the water into
the main operation tank to be treated, so a fail close valve is
outfitted to the pipes transporting the toxic water to control
the flow rate, in case of an unexpected shutdown the signal
ceases to reach the valve so it closes to prevent pollution, and
to store the water until the shutdown is treated by technicians,
or the signal reaches the valve again.