A Quick Guide to Pressure Relief Valves (PRVs)

This indispensable book systematically guides you through Pressure Relief Valves and how they work. It shows how protective devices perform an important function in preventing the accumulation of overpressure that can result in failure and the uncontrolled release of stored energy. They are therefore categorised as safety critical items of engineering equipment. The book goes on to show that their design and testing is heavily controlled by published technical standards because many countries are covered by statutory legislation.

The content of the book shows that service damage and degradation mechanisms are outlined for various applications – PRVs and bursting discs are used in a wide variety of process conditions, ranging from clean service to heavily corrosive process fluids. This results in a correspondingly large number of damage mechanisms that can prevent them from working if they are not inspected and tested correctly. Risk based inspection procedures are introduced in this book as a method of minimising the chances of failure, and therefore maintaining high levels of safety.

This Quick Guide to Pressure Relief Valves is intended to provide easily accessible technical information for engineers and technicians involved in the operation, testing and maintenance of pressure systems. It also covers other types of protective devises such as bursting discs.

Cliff Matthews BSc, CEng, MBA, FIMechE is an experienced engineer with a wide knowledge of the inspection of pressure systems and the interpretation of engineering codes and standards.