Rob G. Spekreijse, Helmuth Rijnhart
Papers # 2016 Berlin
World wide the MLFC pipe market is growing especially the PVC MLFC pipe market. Standards are established first in Europe, Australia, then the America’s, Japan and recently Asian countries are recently following. The main driver using MLFC pipe is reducing the costs of pipe by using less (virgin) material with a minimum on extra investment. By introducing larger diameters and increased production (up to 1800 kg/hour) in MLFC pipe technology, especially the last 6 years, technologies have developed very fast, solving issues appearing in the years before. MLFC seems to be developed to a next step and the question is, what kind of material can be used in the middle layer. Big programs like Vinyl 2010 and Vinyl plus have created in Europe a large demand for recycled material to be used in the middle layer, but in Europe, due to legislation, more industries tend to use recycled material resulting in high price levels for recycled materials. The main issue not to start in certain countries (and companies) MLFC technology is the materials handling and the “complex “ way of solving this problem. Also in this field, al lot of dedicated solutions are developed in the last 6-10 years to create a massive demand in MLFC technology.
