SUSPICIOUS AND COUNTERFEIT VALVES
honest. But someone would still have to
process the valves to make them operable, “and what happened in the past, and
I’m certain it’s done to a certain extent
today, is someone would have a manufacturer’s tag made” that was bogus, then
they’d rebuild the valve completely and
attached the bogus tag, he explains.
The problem got so bad it led to the
formation of the Valve Repair Council in
the early 1990s, whose primary mission
was to certify valve facilities working on
manufacturers’ products.
A FEW EXAMPLES
Last year, the NRC released an information notice explaining a November 2007
incident in which a counterfeit Ladish
stop check valve was discovered on the
stator cooling water skid of the Southern
Company’s Hatch Unit 2 nuclear power
plant in Georgia (Figure 1 is the body of
a counterfeit and the genuine Ladish
valve. Figure 2 is the stem of a counterfeit and the genuine valve.). Another
example occurred in 1987, when eight
counterfeit 4-inch, 1500-psi, pressure-sealed Crane valves were discovered at
an ARCO chemical plant near Houston.
In that case, the name “Crane” was
apparently welded to each valve body, the
NRC explains. In February, 2008, the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s
Particle Physics Division reported discovery of a large number of suspect/counterfeit small ball valves.
Bob Baker, independent safety consultant, relates an incident where a paper
mill was trying to cut costs by buying
remanufactured valves from a third
party. The supplier had not bothered to
check the valves’ wall thicknesses, and
one day the side of a pulp stock valve
blew out and gushed a 6- to 8-foot
stream of pulp. No injuries were reported, Baker says, “but had someone been
standing there next to it, they probably
would have gotten hurt when it blew.”
THE COSTS OF
COUNTERFEIT VALVES
Counterfeit valves may not always fail in
such a dramatic way, but when they do,
they can cause process upsets, downtime
and accidents. They also hurt legitimate
valve manufacturers by taking market
share and by damaging reputations: a
failed valve with a false trademark has
the potential for giving the legitimate
manufacturer a bad name.
DOE HSS GUIDELINES FOR USERS
In 2007 the Department of Energy’s Health, Safety and Security Office of Corporate Safety Analysis issued Rev 6 of Suspect/
Counterfeit Items Awareness Training, available at www.hss.energy.gov/CSA/CSP/sci/SCIAwareness TrainingManual062007.pdf.
Appendix B of that document lists indications that render items suspect. They include:
Piping and Piping Components
(including Mechanical and Metal
Products)
A. General Indications
; Used component appearance
; Unusual or inadequate packaging
; Foreign newspapers used as
packaging
; Scratches on component outer
surface
; Evidence of tampering
; Components with no markings
; Pitting or corrosion
; External weld or heat indica-
tions
; Questionable or meaningless
numbers
; Typed labels
; Evidence of hand-made parts
; Painted stainless steel
; Ferrous metals that are clean
and bright
; Excess wire brushing or painting
; Ground off casting marks with
stamped marks in the vicinity
; Ground off logo mark
; Signs of weld repairs
; Threads showing evidence of
wear or dressing
; Inconsistency between labels
; Old or worn nameplates
; Nameplates that look newer
than the component
; Missing manufacturer’s standard
markings and logos
; Overlapping stamps
; Different colors of the same part
; Traces of Prussian Blue
; No specification number
; No size designation
; Missing pressure class rating
; Other missing designations per
the specification
; Evidence of re-stamping
; Deficient welds on chemi-
cal/nuclear shipping casks
; Thinner than expected
; Parts identified as “China” only,
or “Korea,” “Mexico,” “Thai-
land,” “India”
; Excess certification logos (i.e.
“UL,”“FM,”“CGA,”“AGA”) all
on one valve body – not normal,
usually will have one or two
logos plus ANSI or ASME
B. General Valve Indications:
; Wrench marks on valve packing
glands, nuts, and bolts
; Nameplates attached with screws
rather than rivets
; Poor fit between assembled valve
parts
; Dirty internals
; Scratched or marred fasteners or
packing glands
; Gate valve: gate off-center when
viewed through open end
; Fresh sand-blasted appearance of
valve bodies, eyebolts, fittings,
stems
; Loose or missing fasteners
; Different types of hand wheels on
valves of the same manufacturer
; Some parts (e.g., hand wheels)
look newer than rest of the valve
; Improper materials (e.g., bronze
nut on a stainless stem)
; Post-manufacturing alteration to
identification/rating markings
; Indication of previous joint weld-
ing
; Excessive standards markings
(e.g. UL, FM, CGA, AGA) (check
manufacturer literature for stan-
dards they use)
; Valves will not open or close, even
when wrench applied.
; Substandard valves mixed in with
standard valves (substitution)
