What is the difference between gate valve and ball valve?

Gate valve and ball valve are both most widely used industrial valves, while they play different roles in plumbing systems, and definitely gate valve and ball valve have some differences in their working principle, advantages, structural characteristics, applications,etc. Today we are going to introduce their difference one by one: 

Difference of gate valve and ball valve in working principle: 

Gate Valve: the opening and closing part of gate valve is the gate plate, and the movement direction of the gate plate is perpendicular to the direction of the medium fluid. The gate valve can be only fully opened and fully closed, and can not be used to adjust or throttle. The gate valve is sealed through the contact between the valve seat and the gate plate. Usually, the sealing surface is welded with metal materials to increase wear resistance, such as welded stainless steel. The gate plate has rigid gate plate and elastic gate plate. With different plate used, gate valve can also be divided into rigid gate valve and elastic gate valve( or sometimes we called them resilient seated gate valve and metal to metal seated gate valves, soft sealing gate valve and hard sealing gate valve). 

Ball Valve: the opening and closing part of ball valve is a sphere, which is driven by the valve stem and rotates around the axis of the ball valve. The ball valve is mainly used to cut off, distribute, and change the flow direction of the medium in the pipelines. The ball valve can be closed tightly through rotating 90° or a small rotating torque. Ball valve is most suitable to be used as switch valve and shut-off valve, and can also be used for fluid regulation and flow control. 

Gate valve and ball valve have different advantages: 

Advantages of gate valves: 

the gate valve has straight flow channel, and its flow resistance is small. 

It is labor saving to open and close the gate valve; 

For gate valve, it is not easy to produce the water hammer. 

Advantages of ball valve: 

The ball valve has good wear resistance; 

The ball valve has long service life; 

The flow resistance of ball valve is almost 0. 

Gate valve and ball valve have different structural types: 

Gate valve: with different structure, gate valve can be divided into rising stem gate valve( os&y gate valve) and non rising stem gate valve. 

Ball valve: with different structure, ball valve can be divided into float ball valve, trunnion mounted ball valve, flexible ball valve. 

Gate valve and ball valve have different applications: 

Gate valve: gate valves are mostly used in water supply and drainage pipelines, sewage pipelines and other water system pipelines. 

Ball Valve: ball valves are mostly used in steam pipelines, gas pipelines, heat pipelines. 

Today Belo Valve has introduced you some differences between gate valve and ball valve, hope those information can help you to figure out which industrial valve should be appropriate for your pipelines, of course, you can also contact us for more information: