Featuring a seamless 316L stainless steel body and dome, the VSS Ball Segment Valve combines full-bore material flow with reliable external sealing for demanding powder-handling applications.
The VSS Ball Segment Valve, available in sizes 150–300, features a body and dome manufactured from 316L stainless steel, with no welds, and a replaceable SINT® engineering polymer gasket. Its full-bore design ensures unrestricted material flow, with no internal obstructions, while its extremely compact construction minimises the overall footprint.
Designed for demanding applications, VSS valves are available with FDA and (EC) No. 1935/2004-compliant materials for food-contact applications and ATEX certification. Their low-residue design minimises product retention and contamination, facilitating rapid cleaning and helping to reduce machine downtime. Maintenance is also straightforward, making VSS valves an effective solution for the discharge of free-flowing materials from silos, hoppers and process equipment.
The application: carbon black
A recent installation at a major tyre manufacturing plant, producing 10 million tyres per year, demonstrated the advantages of the VSS design in one of the most challenging powder-handling applications: carbon black.
Extremely fine and cohesive, carbon black tends to stick together and can form bridges and build-ups, potentially disrupting the continuity of the process. Conventional valve technologies had failed to provide a satisfactory solution. Butterfly valves can encourage bridging because of the disc positioned within the material flow, while slide gate valves, despite providing a free passage for the product, can be affected by external leakage when handling very fine powders.
The result
The introduction of WAMGROUP®’s VSS Ball Segment Valve overcame both challenges. By combining the full material passage of a slide gate valve with the effective external sealing characteristic of a butterfly valve, the VSS provides reliable material handling while reducing the risk of bridging, product leakage and contamination of the working environment.
The benefits of the VSS design also extend to applications where product retention and cross-contamination must be minimised. Its low-residue profile makes it particularly suitable for the discharge points of vertical mixers, where rapid and thorough cleaning is essential between batches.
The excellent external sealing performance also makes VSS valves suitable for handling toxic or harmful powders, helping to protect operators while minimising emissions into the surrounding environment.
VSS Ball Segment Valves: full-bore flow, reliable sealing and low-residue operation — even when handling the most demanding powders.
