WWA advertorial , october 2014

The Plastic Pipes Conference Association (PPCA) was formed over 10 years ago to take over the organisation of the Plastic Pipes series of International Conferences. During that time there have been five very successful conferences and the sixth will be Plastic Pipes XVII in Chicago on 22-24th September 2014. 

The PE100+ Association, this year also celebrating its 15th anniversary, is a founding member of the PPCA and has a number of active members on the Board and Conference Organising Committee. Robin Bresser, cofounding Director of the PPCA says: “It is great to see the Plastics Pipes Conferences going from strength to strength and I am sure that the Chicago event will be equally successful.” Pierre Belloir, the current President of the PE100+ Association adds: “The PE100+ Association itself was founded 15 years ago to support the market development of PE100 pipes and fittings and it is satisfying to witness the tremendous progress that has been achieved and the upcoming conference in Chicago will feature many papers highlighting the success of PE pipes around the world.”

Raw material developments are still extremely important to support continued market development and customer satisfaction. New chlorine resistant PE100 grades are described by Mark Boerakke and William Gauthier in their conference papers. One recent major step forward was the development of high stress crack resistant PE100 materials, which are being increasing used for demanding installation conditions. However a reliable short term test technique is still being sought and possible contenders are presented in papers by Ernst van der Stok and Dominique Gueugnaut. 

Today PE100 pressure pipes are being manufactured up to 2,500mm in diameter and often towed halfway around the world to the installation sites. Design engineers are gaining ever increasing confidence in these systems and Roger Jepson will describe a number of industrial projects in the Middle East and Gerald Beckton from Australia, will describe the installation of a 1600mm PE100 pipeline which averted a major electrical power outage. Also from Australia Alan Whittle describes how the coal seam gas industry has benefitted from the development of new techniques for “ploughing in” larger diameter PE100 pipes. Trenchless installation is also providing benefits in crowded urban environments. Prashant Nikhade will describe how Orange City Water are using horizontal directional drilling (HDD) to provide a “24x7” water supply to the city of Nagpur, India. Another paper describes how the renovation of an old cast iron water main in the Shanghai was achieved without disturbing the foundations of a bridge which carried an important high speed rail link. 

portant high speed rail link. The PE100+ Association has also strongly supported the development of specifications, as Belloir explains: “We firmly believe that strong specifications and standardisation give the end users confidence in PE pipe systems and in a paper with Steve Beech and Christophe Salles I will explain how this has helped bring success in the PE100 pipe market. We hope that you will be there to listen to our paper and some of the other 130 papers that will be presented at the conference.” WWA