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Customer Success Blufors


Success Story #1:

Luxfer & Swagelok: Building Reliable
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Systems

"The initiative is to bring the price of fuel cell buses down to a more affordable level, by about 30%. But for us to do this, we need to be working with companies like Swagelok to bring that down" - Luxfer


To simplify, a hydrogen vehicle consists of a pressure containment system that stores the hydrogen and sends it through the fuel cell creating water and electricity - without harmful emissions. Where Swagelok comes in for Luxfer, is to bring together the gas cylinders for the application into a manifold which becomes a delivery system for the hydrogen.

Governments are investing more and supporting the development of hydrogen, infrastructure, refueling stations and develop of vehicles. It's not just about the development of hydrogen vehicles, it's about getting the fueling stations out there, and getting people trained how to handle hydrogen - like how to use it, fill it, and maintain the buses that are out there.

When it comes to hydrogen vehicles, products must be certified to EC-79 - Swagelok's EC-79 certification of products has enabled Luxfer to pursue business with European bus manufacturers. There has been a significant investment to obtain, and upkeep the EC-79 approvals for Swagelok product. In particular, Luxfer and its bus manufacturer customers prefer Swagelok's FK Series medium-pressure tube fitting for the simple installation - either by torque, or a full turn and a quarter.

 


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Success Story #2:

Bluefors and Swagelok Share a Passion
for Uncompromising Quality

"I trust Swagelok because the parts are so important that are in the system. We don't want to make any sort of compromises on quality and Swagelok supports that.” - Bluefors


Swagelok Helsinki’s customer Bluefors, Ltd., engineers and builds customized cryogen-free dilution refrigeration systems for quantum computing and experimental physics. The Bluefors system recirculates helium-3 (3He), a light, stable isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron that is rare and expensive.

The Bluefors system features two closed loops—one for a pre-cooling stage and one for the dilution refrigeration stage—which recirculate helium-3 in support of equipment that is often being set up and tuned for months or even more than a year. Recirculation helps to preserve the global helium-3 supply.

Wherever helium-3 is at high pressure within the Bluefors system, they use components and a high-pressure panel solution from Swagelok. Pieter Vorselman, co-founder and chief operating officer of Bluefors, observes: “Swagelok parts play an essential role because they are the ones that actually contain the helium-3. So, the leak tightness is very important in this part. If any leak would appear the system would stop.”

With the 60 Series Ball Valve, Swagelok created a robust, reliable valve suitable for a wide range of systems and applications. Several key features create a distinct design difference versus a traditional valve design including a compensating seat design and live loaded, two-piece stem packing. With it's vast feature set, ease of maintenance, variety of available sizes and connection types, and suite of configurable options and accessories, the 60 Series Ball Valve delivers performance, reliability and value. Learn more below.



Other area's we've helped:

  • Swagelok works closely with Bluefors on inventory management to ensure its production is never affected by Swagelok product availability.
  • Swagelok provides engineering expertise to Bluefors in the form of a high-pressure panel, which we designed to be as small as possible and isolated from the system’s computing system to cut down on electric noise.

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