materials feature | PEX
in Virsbo is well suited to serve those customers,” said Jan Peter Tewes, president of building solutions in Europe for Uponor. The company will retain its logistics centre and sales and marketing operations in Spain.
PEX connection Residents of the districts of Walding and Gaißamühle in Passau, Austria have historically got their potable water from privately-owned wells – but recently decided to connect their properties to the municipal water network. At the same time, a telecommunication and a vacuum sewage line were installed. The length of the new pipeline is about 520m. All components for the water line were supplied by
Agru of Austria. As a main water service line, a Sureline II pipe in OD 110 mm SDR 11 was chosen. This pipe is made out of high-grade crack resistant PE 100-RC material, which makes a sand bed around the pipe during the installation unnecessary. At the same time, pressurised branches from the main line to the houses were also installed – using Agru’s SurePex pipes, which were connected to the pressure tapping valves via electrofusion couplers. The high flexibility of the SurePex pipes, and their
high crack resistance, were the main reasons for using them, according to the Passau municipal authority. Because the end customer is responsible for the
Agru combined PE100 and PEX materials when installing a new water network in Austria
installation of the house connection, pipes can some- times be improperly installed. The SurePex pipe does not require any sand bed and is very flexible – making an improper installation highly unlikely.
Setting standards A new ASTM International standard will empower producers of PEX tubes to conduct better, faster quality control testing at lower cost and greater accuracy.
Due to its enhanced properties, PEX is increasingly
used to make plastic tubes for building systems as well as for the oil, gas, chemical, sewage, and water industries. The new standard – published as F3203, Test Method
for Determination of Gel Content of Crosslinked Polyeth- ylene (PEX) Pipes and Tubing – replaces existing methods of determining the degree of cross-linking that are more time consuming and not specific to plastic pipes. “The new test method will benefit PEX pipe manu-
facturers by reducing a quality assurance bottleneck,” said ASTM member Robert Samplonius, a lab manager at Kafrit. “This will lead to decreased testing costs and improved sustainability.” The new standard was developed by ASTM’s
committee on plastic piping systems. The committee is working on an intra-laboratory study to develop a complete precision and bias statement for the standard.
PEX at K2016 Evonik showcased a number of its additives technologies at the recent K2016 exhibition. One of the displays on its stand was the ‘Long life time’ exhibit, in which a free-floating water tap on a tube introduced its silane Dynasylan Silfin 50 – a cross-linking agent that is used to convert polyethylene into PEX. The product was specifi- cally designed for use in the drinking water sector and helps water piping systems operate reliably at continu- ously high service temperatures. Silane-crosslinked polyethylene HD pipes are corrosion- and stretch-resist- ant. In addition, the modified pipes provide enhanced protection against crack formation, says Evonik. Also at K2016, Borouge – the joint venture between
Borealis and Adnoc of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – has begun producing Borlink compounds for energy applications. Following the start-up of the Borouge 3 expansion plant in Ruwais, UAE, the company has begun produc- ing PEX compounds using Borealis’ proprietary Borlink technology.
This is the first time that PEX has been made
commercially in UAE, says the company. Borouge delivered the first shipment of compounds – used in insulation applications for medium voltage energy cable systems – to a number of regional and local customers.
Click on the links for more information: ❙
www.uakron.edu ❙
www.uponor.com ❙
www.agru.at ❙
www.astm.org ❙
www.evonik.com ❙
www.borouge.com ❙
www.borealisgroup.com
34 PIPE & PROFILE EXTRUSION | November/December 2016
www.pipeandprofile.com
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