Going International With Your Design - Solenoid Operated Valves

Business is international
This is where your customers are now.
It's no secret to you, Engineer, that the world is densely populated with standards and approvals. No matter where you live or work, the process equipment designs that flow from your workstation, your team, your company, are more likely than ever to end up on foreign shores.


Solenoid Valve
Solenoid Valve
Solenoid operated valves are ubiquitous, even a little mundane in their apparent simplicity, but still require expertise for proper specification and application. The jurisdictional requirements for a valve assembly applied in the same manner can vary from one country to another. This can be especially important when designing equipment or processes that may be installed in different parts of the world, such as United States and European Union production plants of a single company.


Fortunately, many manufacturers now provide valves with multiple approvals from around the world to facilitate the use of a single component across a wide geographic and jurisdictional range. Even with this accommodation, it is still the specifying engineer’s responsibility to select the correct valve, not only for the application, but for a regulatory environment that is populated with standards and approvals that can be difficult to coordinate with confidence. One prominent valve manufacturer has authored a white paper that provides some insight into navigating this challenge, outlining an array of international approval agencies and providing a clear explanation of how T-codes (temperature codes) vary between US and EU agencies. The white paper is available on request and is a must-read for any engineer specifying or servicing solenoid valves.