Many years ago Sure Flow had a brief graphic mascot called “Super Strainer Man!” We felt it appropriate since our strainers do such an amazing job of protecting those expensive downstream pumps and equipment so critical to modern industrial processes.
While Super Strainer Man has moved on, Sure Flow is still very involved with super-hero products and materials, in particular Inconel, which is a family of nickel-chromium-based “Superalloys!”
These alloys are perfectly suited for environments that so many of our customers need them for… Extreme! Whether they’re on off-shore oil rigs or working under extreme heat and pressure, Inconel is an exceptionally rugged material.
Inconel maintains is strength over an extremely wide temperature range. Steel and aluminum in high temperatures have a tendency to experience ‘creep’ or deformation through ‘cold flow’.
‘In materials science, creep (sometimes called cold flow) is the tendency of a solid material to move slowly or deform permanently under the influence of persistent mechanical stresses.[1]‘
It generally occurs after long-term exposure to stress, particularly heat and while brittle fracture may occur suddenly and be obvious because of changes in system pressure, it can be more problematic as the deformation may allow some particulate through a strainer, damaging equipment slowly.
Inconel is often used in rocket engines and we’ve all seen those videos from cameras set under the launch pad of rockets. As the engines ignite it’s hard to imagine a hotter more challenging environment for a material to function in.
Inconel is a product Sure Flow has lots of experience with because our customers work in exceptionally tough environments and they demand our strainers can stand up to those kinds of stresses.
One of our most recent fabricated projects with Inconel involved the fabrication of a “Temporary” or “Cone” strainer.
This Class 2500 Strainer is not for the standard ASME B16.5 flanges, but for Tecklok hub connectors.
In this instance the cone strainer ring is the gasket or seal when installed between two flanges.
When this “temporary” strainer is removed after the start-up process, it will be replaced with a standard off the shelf seal.
In many regular temporary strainer installations, once the start-up strainer is removed the bolts are just cranked down to make up the 1/8” or ¼” that the strainer ring filled.
In other installations, particularly high-pressure situations, when the temporary strainer is removed, an OD/ID ring, the same thickness as the cone ring (with nothing welded to it) is installed where the temporary startup strainer was.
The unit in the picture has been painted orange for internal identification.
If you’re ‘under pressure’ to acquire ‘high pressure’ temporary or cone strainers, you should talk to the ‘high pressure’ specialists. You will NOT get pressure from the sales person you speak with. You WILL get the expertise of the entire Sure Flow Team to find the best solution for your unique application.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_(deformation)