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High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Liners For Steel Pipe Excel Spreadsheet Calculator

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High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Liners For Steel Pipe Excel Spreadsheet Calculator

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Carbon Steel Pipe is often lined with HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) in corrosive and abrasive services to enhance the service life of the pipe.

Following are some salient features for HDPE lining of CS pipes
1. Typical HDPE grades used for pipe lining are
a. ASTM PE-3408
b. ASTM PE-4710
c. ISO PE-100

These are chemically resistant to a wide range of chemicals and also provide increased resistance to erosion compared to bare CS:

3. HDPE lining can be used to rehabilitate existing pipelines since HDPE is excellent for bridging holes and spanning gaps often caused by corrosion and erosion.
4. HDPE lining can also improve the flow characteristics of the pipeline, because, although there is a slight reduction in inside diameter of the host pipe, the absolute roughness of HDPE is approximately 30 times lower (smoother) than new carbon steel.
5. The earlier process of lining CS pipe was 'slip lining' wherein the host CS pipe was used "as a conduit for a smaller diameter fully structural HDPE pipe. With a hoop strength that is "drastically lower than carbon steel, HDPE pipe must be very thick to contain increasing "amounts of pressure, and the pressure rating of the HDPE is significantly reduced in " "hydrocarbon service and at temperatures above ambient conditions."
6. The new method is the use of interactive, tight-fitting HDPE liners and utilized in oilfield pipelines. The applications typically include crude oil pipelines, pipelines containing oil emulsions or 3-phase flow, produced water, water injection / disposal, sour and wet gas pipelines, and CO2 production and injection lines

Criteria for Wall Thickness of Interactive HDPE Liners
The HDPE liner is designed and produced such that the outside diameter (OD) is larger than the ID of the host pipe to be protected or rehabilitated. Based on the Id of the host pipe, the appropriate HDPE liner size is known, and the HDPE wall thickness can be chosen based on extrusion capabilities and the desired service application. To save raw material cost of the HDPE liner, the thinnest practical wall thickness is chosen; however physical limitations of the HDPE extrusion process is often the determining factor in allowable wall thickness.

The manufacturers of HDPE liners typically use a ratio of OD to wall thickness (called the 'Standard Dimension Ratio' or 'SDR') of '41'.

Credit: Ankur Srivastava