ZhanJie Wang, Cindy Wang
Papers # 2016 Berlin
With the offers of whole value chain people, the application of PE pressure pipes has been increased widely in China since 1990’s, especially for gas pipes. Compounding PE material ensures the qualified pipes being used for infrastructure projects. There are some Innovation products from pipe producers to enlarge the PE pipe application area, such as reinforced composite pipes, multiple pipes etc. On the other hand, due to unbalance development, we still have challenges to realize sustainable development, such as the quality of PE water pipes can’t match the standard requirement, no enough training or education etc. Fortunately, the situation is changed and can be improved through continually communicating with end users and enough compounding PE supply.
There is about more than a million PE pressure pipes produced in China each year, applied for municipal gas & drinking water pipes, and industrial application. As same as other region, PE gas pipe and PE water pipe follow up the China national standards, almost equivalent to ISO standards, such as ISO 4437 and ISO4427. Different from other region, in China, the PE gas pipe is compulsory standard, which is only one among plastics pipe standards in China due to potential risk for people life and assets. As a result, people paid more attention to PE gas pipe quality. However, even though, many pipe producers did not fully follow up China PE gas pipe standard until the quality awareness improvement by producers and end-users. Since then, the volume of pre-compounding PE gas pipes has been gradually increased, and its benefit and safety have been accepted by gas companies. Meanwhile, the effort made by the PE100+ and G5+ played an important role in the quality improvement for PE gas pipeline.
On the other hand, the use of PE water pipes has not as popular as PE gas pipes due to some reasons which are investigated through the main municipal water companies in China, for example the water pipeline selection criteria, the pressure and temperature, and how much they know about PE pipes etc. The article describes the efforts by China Plastics Piping Association (CPPA) with its members to provide high quality, durable PE pressure pipes to the community. It is indicated that the contribution from whole value chain will be important to realize sustainable development for PE water pipes, including enough PE compounding resin supply, reliable fitting and valves to ensure system leakage free, good communication with design institutes, and efficient training to constructors and end users etc.
In addition, the article reviews the progress of PE pressure pipe in terms of innovation of PE pressure product, application and development for last a few decades. Finally, the market trend and suggestion are given by CPPA.
