Plastic Pipes Conference Association # 2021 Amsterdam
Patrick Campbell, Joanne Claronino, Shana Meeus, Joseph Sanders, David Chrystie-Lowe
Polyethylene (PE) potable water mains, with design life of 50 years (BS EN 12201), have been in widespread use in the UK water industry for more than 30 years. PE pipe is light, flexible and reliable in comparison with other pipe materials and the UK water industry has made a considerable investment in replacing ageing cast iron mains with this relatively new plastic material. Over 30 years ago, Severn Trent Water took a far- sighted approach of laying two testbeds of plastic pipe water mains at pumping stations in the northwest of England. This provided a unique opportunity to allow sections to be exhumed and studied to establish long term deterioration in “real life” service conditions. This has been used to verify previous work, based upon accelerated testing, which demonstrated that PE pipe materials can be expected to last considerably longer than their design lifetime.
This research project, led by a research organisation funded by the UK water utilities, has been completed in 2020. For pipe currently within the UK water network, a method of determining remaining lifetime for PE pipe has been developed that can be used to assess the level of risk associated with ageing pipes in future using DSC OIT and measurements of the levels of Hydroperoxide degradation. This relies upon the build-up of a database of results for DSC OIT as a function of time in service and similarly for levels of hydroperoxide when antioxidants are depleted. This work has also demonstrated that the specification of 20 minutes for DSC OIT needs to be increased.
Although material properties were maintained in all exhumed samples, some concern was raised in regard to the level of creep observed and the effect this may have on making new joints to the existing network.
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