Emerson Process Management (St. Louis, Mo.; www.emerson.com) officially unveiled its new $30-million testing facility on May 11 in Marshalltown, Iowa.
Known as the Emerson Innovation Center–Fisher Technology, the 136,000-ft2 facility is used for testing of large-scale control valve assemblies and related equipment, and is capable of replicating actual installed process conditions for a wide variety of piping arrangements and sizes.
The center houses the world’s largest flow laboratory, with the capacity to test control valves in pipes of diameters from 5 cm to 1 m. Control valves can be tested at pressures up to 3,500 psi, and flowrates sufficient to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just over eight minutes.
Emerson says the ability to test large valves under real-world plant conditions at the center ensures product reliability, efficiency, environmental compliance and safety before being installed at a customer site.
The facility features a 26,000-ft2 sound chamber for testing and verifying noise levels of devices before the products are used at customer sites. In addition, it houses laboratories specifically for vibration testing, interoperability, firmware testing and others.
Located at the historic site of Emerson subsidiary Fisher, the building was completed earlier this year, after construction began in April 2007.