Valve bladders – the result of more than 30 years of research & development

The bladders for AKO valves have also been designed so that they can be easily and quickly replaced. Long downtimes due to worn bladders are thus a thing of the past. Special tools or expertise are not required. Maintenance work on the valve or the valve bladder can be easily carried out on-site by your own employees themselves.

We have produced our own maintenance instructions for every valve series that guide you step-by-step through the maintenance tasks and have made them available on our website or our YouTube channels.
For example, you can view the adjacent instructions for how to change a bladder on a valve from the VMC series.

Contact us about your valve bladder requirements

The valve bladders from AKO are available in various rubber grades. Different elastomer grades are suitable depending on the medium being controlled, the ambient temperature or temperature of the medium or the operating and differential pressure.

Rubber grades available for the valve bladders:

• Natural rubber (NR)
• Viton (FPM)
• Nitrile (NBR)
• Neoprene (CR)
• Butyl (IIR)
• Hypalon (CSM)
• EPDM

If you want to control or isolate foodstuffs, chemicals or pharmaceutical products, AKO also offers EHEDG-certified bladders for valves. Furthermore, special flange bladders that can also cover the transitions between the valve and pipe and thus protect them from direct contact with the pumped medium are available.

These bladders are compatible with standard in-place cleaning and sterilisation processes SIP (Sterilization-In-Place) and CIP (Cleaning-In-Place). Some bladder and valve configurations are also piggable and thus RIP compatible (Rinse-In-Place)

The following video shows the individual EHEDG-conform cleaning or sterilisation processes on a valve with an internal bladder.

Due to the various compound grades tested for the bladders, they have been designed to handle the special requirements of a variety of different pumped materials and guarantee a long service life, quick opening and closing times and reliable isolation or control of the product flow. 

Bladders for AKO valves can be used with relatively easy to control media such as pure liquids and also with abrasive media such as bulk materials, sugar and salts or even with substances that tend to clump or clog that would pose a challenge for standard valves.

Bladders from AKO have been successfully deployed for many years in the following industrial sectors:

• Chemical & pharmaceutical
  For chemicals, lacquers, pigments, fertilisers,
  powders, tablets or liquid medicines, etc.
• Food processing industry
  For the hygienic processing of liquid, viscous,
  clumpy and powdered foodstuffs, etc.
• Plastic processing
  For plastic granules, additives, etc.
• Ceramics manufacturing
  For solids, sludge, slags, etc.
• Environmental and wastewater technology
  For wastewater, dusts, sludge, suspensions, etc.
• Building material processing
  For cement, concrete, gravel, gypsum, grout, etc.
• Commercial vehicles and trains
  For blow pipes for bulk goods of all types, tanker valves,
  controlling sewage and grey water, etc.
  
• Silos
  As a safety component to prevent overfilling,
  as a valve for distribution and removal,
  for closing off inlet lines, etc.
• Mining
  For coal, stones, minerals, ores, etc.

The bladders are responsible for several main tasks in the valves from AKO:

• The bladder... controls the applied flow using compressed air
• The bladder... is responsible for safely and tightly sealing off the pumped medium
• The bladder... also releases the product flow again
• The bladder... is in direct contact with the medium and must withstand its sometimes highly abrasive properties
• The bladder... is required to cope with various temperatures and pressures
• The bladder... must guarantee an untapered flow of the medium in its opened state

The fulfilment of all of these requirements is the result of decades of research & development, contributes to the fact that bladders for valves from AKO Armaturen are the best in their class and makes AKO the world leader in mechanically or pneumatically operated valves.