Source: World Instrument & Automation, November 2005 (MICONEX 2005 review)
Keywords: actuator; valve positioner; intelligence
Nearly 60 actuator exhibitors took part, foreign ones (including agents) slightly outnumbering domestic. Foreign majors included Samson (China), Siemens A&D (China), Hola control valves (Germany), Spirax Sarco (China), and SIPOS' Beijing office; domestic majors included Wuzhong Instrument, Tianjin Instrument Group, Shanghai Automation Instrumentation, Anshan Instrumentation, Xuzhou Arca control valves, Shanghai Vautex fluid controls, Shanghai Yamatake and Chongqing Hualin. A review of the exhibits and the domestic-foreign gap follows.
Smart positioners have been out for over a decade; products from Siemens, ABB and Yamatake have been revised repeatedly and are widely accepted in China. Yamatake's SVP3000 Alphaplus (launched 1998) and its recent Valstaff control-valve maintenance support system stand out. SVP3000 Alphaplus comes integral or separated, explosion-proof or intrinsic-safe, with multiple communication interfaces and wide applicability.
Design philosophy: safeguard operation; cut maintenance cost; improve vibration resistance; raise productivity by exploiting the smart instrument's advanced functions. Structural features: automatic setting and easy adjustment; magnetic-induction rotary switches for convenient operation; an intelligent communicator optimising positioner functions; easy maintenance with a built-in filter against air-path blockage; modular, highly reliable design. The APV200 separated type moves the opening sensor out of the positioner body — a fresh concept.
Yamatake's Valstaff is another diagnostic software after Fisher FIELDVUE's ValveLink. Analysing valve-maintenance practice, Yamatale aims at standardised maintenance and a maintenance platform. Valstaff's concrete and extensive diagnostics include: sticking diagnosis; frequency monitoring at various openings; cumulative sliding distance; command-versus-opening deviation; action frequency; zero-opening comparison; accumulated full-close counts; stroke-speed comparison; and positioner internal temperature. Quantifying such indicators is the right direction for standardised maintenance, though it needs close cooperation of users and valve makers to accumulate data and set effective quantitative indices per maker and per criticality, letting users build their own maintenance standards for effective, economical upkeep.
Domestically, after Wuzhong, Shanghai Institute of Industrial Automation, Shanghai Automation Instrumentation and Chongqing Chuanyi No.11 plant each succeeded with smart positioners, Xuzhou Arca showed its type 827-II design-finalised smart positioner at this exhibition — performance similar to Siemens' per published data — expected on the market within six months.
For power-station control valves the main exhibitor was Germany's Hola, a specialist manufacturer with its own R&D much bought by large domestic plants with good reviews. Its automatic recirculation tee valve, compound feedwater regulating valve, high-differential pressure-reducing valve and desuperheater-attemperator are a new power-station generation with breakthroughs in structural design, workmanship and materials — genuinely high-tech.
Smart fieldbus actuators are the current development hotspot: non-intrusive design to IP67–IP68; LCD window with Chinese/English menus for local operation; comprehensive intelligent protection; and powerful configuration — various control and action modes without adding or removing any hardware or software. Domestic Shanghai Automation No.11 plant and Tianjin Automation No.7 plant have completed new-generation smart actuators, and Shanghai Autork showed smart actuators too. Tianjin No.7's fieldbus actuator is built around the imported German 750-333 Profibus-DP adapter and its I/O modules; the bus product stays compatible with ordinary analogue interfaces — more convenient, safer and more reliable in practice. Tianjin Kailida showed the RLD rotary actuator series, 16 Nm, full-shell, paired with low-pressure DN15-50 ball valves — a special product born of market characteristics. Represented by Wuhan Huayi, the DCL series — imitate-and-innovate on foreign technology — has completed a 20–2,000 Nm quarter-turn range with performance similar to foreign equivalents and better value, attracting market attention, though the modulating servo controller still awaits new smart functions.
Wuzhong Instrument licensed ARCA's ECOTROL control-valve technology in 2002 and, after over two years of preparation, has launched it as the successor to the CV3000 series, drawing wide attention. ECOTROL is modular and highly flexible: DN15–400, ANSI 150–2500, -196 to +530℃. Modularity greatly raises part commonality, saving manufacturing cost and material.
Chongqing Hualin launched its "full-capability ultra-light control valve" — a V-ball valve — in 1998. Building on the comparison of linear versus quarter-turn valves, it develops the latent advantages of quarter-turn valves to meet demands for fuller function, better performance and lighter weight — a topic of industry concern since the 1970s. Since Masoneilan's inventive Camflex, V-ball valves, eccentric butterflies and control ball valves have kept developing, spreading widely and holding a fair market share by century's end — proof of quarter-turn potential. Yet the industry agrees that quarter-turn valves basically or fully replacing linear ones lacks theoretical and practical grounds, nor should "all-function" products be chased — that is unscientific.
China imported many actuator technologies in the 1980s–90s, and its own R&D products have all been industrialised and applied across industries, bringing the industry overall to the international level of the 1990s. Wuzhong's imported CV3000 and the Institute's compact control valves became the high-volume basic products made by numerous factories; the actuators imported by Shanghai No.11 and Tianjin No.7 became domestic mainstream; rising private firms such as Autork offer competitive smart actuators and more market choice. Quality awareness has grown, CNC machines and machining centres have spread, and industry-wide product quality has improved; advanced equipment and processes implement design intent better, raising reliability, life and performance. But measured against 21st-century technology and market demands, gaps remain:
1. High-end products still depend on foreign sourcing. Smart positioners rely mainly on imports. Domestic R&D began in the early 1990s with stage results, but few reached industrial scale; even the Sichuan works in the market faces competitiveness issues. Korea, no earlier starter, is already competing in China. Power-station special valves (such as Hola's range) are basically a blank domestically. For bus-type actuators users still buy imported; domestic brands hardly hold the market.
2. Weak indigenous development of new products. Product development still tracks and imports foreign technology; recent imitate-and-innovate products rarely break through. In smart positioners, while the first domestic generation cannot yet compete, foreign makers already pair positioners with valve diagnostic software, widening the gap.
3. Weak secondary development of high-volume standard products. Control valves especially lack innovation against new technologies, materials and processes — entering a new "ageing period". Without timely action, a second "technology-import cycle" looms.
