Successful application of PP pipes for Ultra Pure Water Pipeline

Session 4A
8:50

Albert Lueghamer, AGRU Kunststofftechnik GmbH

Ultra pure water (UPW) is an important resource in several industry sectors. While the main applications are in the electronic, pharmaceutical and food industry also other fields depend on UPW. Pipes made out of Polyvinylidenfluorid (PVDF) as well as Polypropylene (PP) are widely used for the transportation of this special water due to their outstanding leach out behavior, which ensures the required quality of the water.

A project in The Netherland is presented where a pipeline for the transportation of UPW was recently built using PP pipes with a diameter of 280 mm (SDR 11). The project was unique in several ways. While typically UPW piping systems are installed indoors, in this project two 7.5 km long pipelines were built outdoor from a water treatment plant which is generating UPW to an oil field. There the purified water is evaporated and pressed down into the oil well. The reason is to lower the viscosity of the crude oil and consequently boost the oil production from the well.

To ensure the purity of the pipeline special measures were taken during the production as well for transport and installation at site. Furthermore the welding at site was performed in a special designed clean room container using non-contact heated tool butt welding (IR-welding) to avoid any contamination of the pipes during the installation process. Further criteria at this job have been the pressure test of the 7.5 km long pipeline and the start up of the system whereby the target was to reach the designated water quality in a very short time frame.

Albert Lueghamer
Dr. Markus Haager
Peter Eitzenberger

AGRU Kunststofftechnik GmbH