PE pipe making potable inroads

The qualities of polyethylene pipe are piquing the interest of more civil engineers of potable water systems in North America.

The telecommunications and utility industries have long used PE pipe to protect fiber optic cables and deliver natural gas, but use of the material for drinking water systems is still trickling slowly toward acceptance in some places.

In Michigan, Los Angeles-based JM Eagle's offer to replace all lead service lines (LSLs) in Flint, where toxic levels of lead leached from damaged pipes, with free PE pipe prompted not only a study of three kinds of pipe materials — PE, cross-linked PE (PEX) and copper — but a lunch-and-learn session about PE pipe with engineers.

Dustin Langston, an engineer at WL Plastics Corp., which is based in Fort Worth, Texas, said in a telephone interview that his presentation went over the allotted hour with no objections.

“The information was taken well; they had a lot of great questions. It was a very productive meeting,” he said.

With estimated annual sales of $2.45 billion and yearly pipe sales of $340 million, respectively, JM Eagle and WL Plastics are the first- and 11th-ranked manufacturers of plastic pipe, profiles and tubing in North America, according to Plastics News' latest ranking. Their overall PE pipe sales are down in the last year because of a 40 percent drop in demand from the oil and gas gathering industry, according to the Plastics Pipe Institute (PPI), a trade association based in Dallas. However, potable applications show big promise as U.S. cities look to get the lead out of their systems and make some $1 trillion of upgrades over the next 25 years.

Langston said about 15 people attended the meeting at the Flint office of Rowe Professional Services and a handful of others Skyped in. Rowe handled engineering work for Flint until June 30 — the city plans to hire a staff engineer now — but the firm will be solicited for future work, the city said in a statement.

The presentation focused on high density PE pipe and installation methods. Rowe's engineers' main experience with HDPE to date is using it for horizontal directional drilling (HDD) under rivers, Langston said, adding he got a lot of wide eyes when he talked about the installation method of pipe bursting. Few of the attendees had heard of the technology before.

Burst onto the scene

A trenchless method for replacing buried pipelines, pipe bursting was first used in the 1970s in the United Kingdom. The process involves digging roughly 3-foot-by-3-foot entry and exit pits by the house and street, where the service line meets the distribution line or water main. A cone-shaped drilling head with a slightly larger diameter than the old pipe is inserted into an opening. The front end of the bursting head is attached to a pulling cable and the back end is connected to new PE pipe. As the bursting head is pulled through, it breaks the existing pipe into pieces and simultaneously expands the diameter of the cavity for the new pipe.

The old pipe pieces just stay in the ground. Experienced crews can replace three to four service lines a day at 75 percent of the cost of cut-and-bury installation methods, Langston said.

“You take 25 percent off the price,” he added. “You don't have to dig up people's lawns or take out people's driveways. You save money on having to replace those things and you're not disturbing the community. In civil engineering, there's a new aspect that's rarely accounted for and that's social interference. We always talk about cost but what isn't measurable cost wise are the calls and complaints to city offices about construction, noise, debris and dug-up yards. A lot of things are suddenly avoided using trenchless technologies.”

Livonia, Mich., used HDPE pipe from Charter Plastics Inc., which is the No. 77 ranked PPT extruder, to replace 27,000 feet of cracking, leaking iron pipes from April through October 2008. The Titusville, Pa.-based company has estimated sales of $35 million a year.

Livonia reportedly saved $200,000 on Charter's pipe material alone compared to ductile iron and then used pipe bursting to install it. Todd Zilinick, Livonia's chief engineer, still tells his colleagues about the social and environmental advantages of PE pipe.

“One of the greatest benefits of high density polyethylene pipe is it's easy to install, it's less disruptive … and it saves trees,” Zilincik said in a May 2016 testimonial for the Alliance for PE Pipe, which is based in Tulsa, Okla., and promotes the use of HDPE pipe for municipal water systems in the U.S. and Canada as “the responsible infrastructure choice.”

HDPE pipe is joined by heat fusing above grade, which essentially creates a single pipeline free of leaks that can be miles long.

“It's completely welded together,” Langston said. “It won't leak, corrode or rust and it's durable with a 100-year service life. It's also completely inert. Nothing leaches out of polyethylene pipe. If you look at all the food packaging, whether it is milk, soda, water bottles or food, the great majority of that is PE.”

Out of the trench

PPI President Tony Radoszewski isn't surprised the installation techniques for HDPE pipe got a lot of attention at the lunch-and-learn.

“There's a great story for our plastic pipe — polyolefin type pipes like polyethylene — in terms of trenchless installation,” he said in a telephone interview. “What it can do in terms of cost savings is a big deal.”

In addition to pipe bursting, smaller-diameter HDPE pipe can be used to replace existing pipes with a technique called slip lining.

“You don't burst the old pipe; you use it as a host pipe,” Radoszewski said.

Then, there's HDD for installing brand new lines of pipe. A drilling head is sent down an entry pit at an angle and leveled out for a distance. It comes back up through an exit pit pulling new pipe behind it.

While telecom uses remain the single largest market for HDD with a 24.1 percent market share, water uses are on the rise, increasing from 19.5 percent of HDD applications in 2015 to a projected 19.9 percent this year, according to the 18th annual Underground Construction HDD Survey released in June. Gas distribution is another strong HDD market with 18 percent share.

HDPE continues to be the No. 1 pipe material used for HDD with a whopping 49.9 percent market share compared to 22.3 percent for PVC, 14.2 percent for steel pipe and 9.1 percent for ductile iron, the survey also says.

Copper bids high

Flint is looking to replace an estimated 5,000 LSLs and 10,000 galvanized steel lines, which corrode and leave nooks where lead can settle, with copper. The existing pipes were damaged when lead leached into the system after the source of drinking water was switched from Lake Huron to the caustic Flint River without the addition of any anti-corrosive agents.

Estimates to repair Flint's water system using traditional copper pipe range from the city's estimate of $55 million to $80 million and more by others. Bids to replace LSLs at 500 homes that are considered the highest risk for lead exposure came in “extremely high,” Mayor Karen Weaver said. The city was expecting the cost to be about $4,000 per house. No bids were awarded in that round and after follow-up meetings the city plans to go ahead with work at 250 houses by two contractors.

“I believe the bids came in at least 50 percent higher at $6,000 a house,” Langston said. “Copper is the only material they're allowing to spec now for service lines and ductile iron for distribution lines. Not only is copper pipe for service lines four times the cost of polyethylene pipe, but you have very extreme ways to get that copper pipe in the ground and that's cut and bury, which entails digging up yards and streets.”

At least one Michigan lawmaker has publicly questioned why Flint doesn't accept the “generous offer” from JM Eagle.

Competitive landscape

Nationwide, it will cost $1 trillion over the next 25 years to repair existing drinking water systems that are reaching the ends of their useful lives and to serve growing populations, according to the American Water Works Association.

The exact makeup of the buried water pipes isn't known. Going back to the 1870s, the rollout of various pipe materials has evolved from cast iron, to cement-lined cast iron to asbestos cement then in the 1950s-60s ductile iron, PVC and PE.

Globally, the plastic pipe market is forecast to increase at a compounded annual growth rate of 6.8 percent to 2020, according to a March 2016 market report by Lucintel, a market research firm based in Dallas.

The HDPE pipe market in North America had a sales value of about $5.54 billion in 2015 with JM Eagle holding about 18.48 percent of sales, according to Acute Market Reports. In addition to drinking water, HDPE pipes carry wastewater, slurries, chemicals, hazardous waste and compressed gases.

Other PE pipe potable players include Performance Pipe of Plano, Texas; Dura-Line Corp. of Knoxville, Tenn.; and Pipeline Plastics LLC of Westlake, Texas. The companies rank seventh, eighth and 43rd, respectively, in Plastics News' latest ranking.

While PE is the No. 1 pipe material used in water systems in Europe, it is still making inroads in the United States. Langston estimates that PE pipe has 10 percent of the municipal market for both water and sewer applications. PVC has the majority of the plastic pipe market share.

“We're 10 percent nationwide but when you go to states like California we're 50 percent because HDPE pipe is the only material that is earthquake and ground-movement resistant,” Langston said. “A study by Cornell University performed on 16-inch pipe showed you can have 4 feet of lateral shift and the pipelines won't yield. It stays intact.”

Freeze-thaw cycles in northern states like Michigan and drought conditions in Texas also cause the ground to move, making PE pipe a good option, Langston said.

“It doesn't matter where you live in the country, you're going to have ground movement,” he added. “When you look at pipe failures, the main reason for that is bell-and-spigot separation. The pipe pulls apart. But if you have a fused, welded system, such as polyethylene, the pipe just moves with the ground. There are no problems.”

Florida is another big market for PE pipe as a replacement material for corroded metal pipes, Langston said.

Elsewhere, material acceptance can seem like a slog. There are mayors, council members, administrators, engineering firms and public works employees that need to buy into the change to PE.

“We are constantly going all over the country talking about PE pipe,” Langston said. “The interest is incredibly amazing but the change process is slow.”