Sure Flow Equipment products move product. Well, more specifically our products strain fluids that are flowing through them.
Fluids can be a liquid or a gas.
The more standard screens we fabricate fit inside a strainer enclosure and have a lip that rests on a bracket inside the unit. As the fluid moves through the strainer, it goes through the screen often resembling a basket, and the force exerted on it is transferred to the bracket holding it in place.
In the case of this 30” cone strainer pictured below, the opposite happens.
Normal flow on a cone (or most of our other designs) is from inside to outside – with the tip of the cone pointed downstream.
This unit has reverse flow which is from the outside to inside – tip pointed up stream or into the flow.
As you can see in these photos, the mesh lining is on the outside. This is generally a telltale sign that it will be used in a reverse flow environment.
The mesh (or finer straining material) is generally upstream of the perf (the thicker more rugged straining material which supports the mesh), so the less strong mesh is pushed against the stronger perf. The perf adds support.
If the mesh was on the downstream side of the perf, the flow would tend to push it away from the perf and cause it to potentially tear away.
This cone strainer is a temporary strainer and it will be sandwiched between two flanges. It will fit snuggly and won’t be going anywhere.
One of the advantages of a reverse cone strainer installation like this is that it prevents any vibration of the unit, which could cause excessive noise, and wear on the unit.
In the photographs of the inside of the unit you can see that the strainer has ribs and internal bracing to meet burst pressure requirements.
This reverse cone strainer utilizes 316 stainless steel construction, and has 11 gauge, ¼’’ perf with 30 mesh lining on the outside for reverse flow. This configuration provides 200% open area.
In the case of this strainer, the fluid that it will be straining is actually a ‘gas’, natural gas to be exact.
As we prepared this description for the website the northern parts of the country are locked in a cold snap.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration about half of homes in the United States use natural gas for space heating and water heating. When it gets this cold you get a real sense of just how crucial natural gas is to so many of our lives.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/use-of-natural-gas.php
Natural gas accounts for about 33% of electrical generation in the United States, and again, when a big storm brings down power lines, we remember very quickly just how important electricity is to our lives.
Sure Flow Equipment is well aware of how critical natural gas is to the North American economy, and very proud that so many of the products we fabricate are involved with its production and distribution. We are grateful for the confidence our customers continue to have in our ability to produce products that help keep natural gas moving through the distribution network to end users.
We included the final photo of Sean from our Strainer Fabrication Department. Sean gave us some details about the fabrication of this unit and was helpful to position it so we could get photos of the inside reinforcing. Sean standing beside it also helped provide some scale as to just how large this unit is.
Mostly though, Sean provides a key dimension to the custom screen fabrication that Sure Flow Equipment specializes in. That’s the enthusiasm that our team shares to produce such unique and high-quality products for our customers. This reverse flow cone strainer represents hundreds of hours that our experts from procurement to engineering to fabrication to quality control and testing invested in its production. To Sean it represents many days of fabrication work and the feeling of great contentment that he gets at the end of a project. That sense of accomplishment is built into the Sure Flow Equipment work ethos, and it’s the kind of enthusiasm that we focus on every new challenge that our customers present us with!
