Advantages:

A ball valve is commonly the least expensive of any valve configuration and has low maintenance costs. Further to quarter turn on-off operation, quick, ball valves are compact, needs no lubrication, and provide tight sealing along with low torque.

Disadvantages:

Conventional ball valves have associatively poor throttling features. In a throttling position, the partially exposed seat rapidly erodes since of the impingement of high velocity flow.

Port Patterns

Ball valves are available within the venturi, decrease and full port pattern. The full port pattern has a ball along with a bore equivalent to the inside diameter of the pipe.