What Are The 4 Types Of Ball Valves?

Ball valve can be divided according to its structure, sealing mode, functional characteristics and connecting mode. Around four core types, we will prioritize two basic dimensions of structure and sealing method, selecting the most representative types to illustrate:
I. By structure
Floating ball valves
Features: The sphere floats in the medium, compacts the exit seal, realizes the one-way seal. This kind of structure is simple, the sealing performance is good, but the load of the ball is borne entirely by the exit sealing ring, suitable for low and medium pressure situations.
Uses: tap water, cooling water and other low-pressure fluid pipe.
Trunk Ball Valve
Features: The sphere is fixed to the center of the valve and sealed by applying pressure to the sphere through a floating seat. Small operating torque, small seat deformation, stable seal, suitable for high pressure, large diameter applications.
Purpose: High pressure oil and gas pipelines.
V-ball valve
Features: Core has V-shaped incision, shear effect, accurate flow adjustment, flow characteristics similar to the same percentage.
Application: Used for control of medium containing fiber or fine solid particles in papermaking, chemical industry, metallurgy. Three-way ball valve
Features: Available in T and L sizes. Model T can divert or merge three tubes, while Model L can only connect two.
Purpose: Fluid shunt or transport system, such as heating pipe conversion.
ii. By Seal (Supplementary Core Types)
Soft three-pass ball valve
Features: Sealed with rubber or PTFE, good sealing but poor temperature resistance (generally ≤150°C).
Uses: Seal water and gas pipelines with high requirements.
Metal seat ball valve
Features: High temperature (≥250 ℃) and high pressure on solid particles.
Application field: hightemperature and high pressure environment such as petrochemical industry and power plant.
Core Type Recommendation Logic
If you need to strictly limit yourself to four types, we recommend prioritising structured floating ball valves, trapezoidal ball valves and V-ball valves, as well as sealed metal seat ball valves for the following reasons:
Floating ball valves and trunnion-mounted ball valves are the most basic ball valves types, suitable for all low and medium pressure situations.
The V-shaped ball valve represents the flow control function of the ball valve and is the best example of the ball valve function expansion.
Metal sealing ball valve demonstrates its adaptability to extreme working conditions and represents a major breakthrough in sealing technology.
Other Classification Dimensions (expansion of knowledge)
By Actuation Method: manual, electric, pneumatic, Hydraulic Ball Valves.
Connection: flanged ball valve, threaded ball valve, sleeve ball valve, compression ball valve.
By medium: water, vapour, gas and Acid/Alkali Ball Valves.
Ball Valve Classification: water ball valve, steam ball valve, gas ball valve and acid/Alkali.
ball valves shall be classified according to specific application scenario such as pressure, temperature and media characteristics. These four types cover more than 80 per cent of industrial needs and are the preferred reference for design and selection.