Extrusion International 5-2017

26 Extrusion International 5/2017 PIPE EXTRUSION Innovation in the plastic pipe industry: PVC-O fittings ecoFITTOM ® Along the years, plastic pipes have become a main solution for water transportation and distribution, gaining market share to the traditional materials. These pipes present characteristics not present in pipes made of other materials. Many aspects, as installation cost and speed, maintenance, pumping energy, flow capacity, etc., are usually underestimated and not taken into account in infrastructures that should last 50 years or more, being in the long term much more important than the pipe price. PVC-O Background In the last years and under the leadership of Molecor, PVC-O pipes have had a very intense evolution in the range of products availability, spread of the standards worldwide and promotion of projects. There are many advantages that are common to plas- tic pipes that determine the election of these materi- als for water transportation, well known for everyone, among them: corrosion resistance, light weight, easi- ness of installation, etc. PVC-O maximizes these excel- lent features and the competitiveness of the installed pipes in this material is still difficult to achieve. Then, although there are cheaper solutions in the market, PVC-O can still continue its evolution. PVC-O fittings, a new milestone on the market Fittings are widely used for connecting pipes and forming pipe systems. They are essential since no pipes can be installed without the use of fittings to change their direction, to fit different sizes or shapes, and for other purposes such as regulating and measuring fluid flow. For each use there is a specific fitting – i.e. adapters, elbows, tees, reduc- ers, valves, couplers, etc. One important deterrent for the expansion of PVC-O has been the lack of fittings in this material, being duc- tile iron ones the most popular for high pressure and diameters above 200 mm. After a hard process of R&D, ecoFITTOM ® are the first PVC-O fittings for this range of products and applica- tions. Currently, piping systems (whether plastic, con- crete, cast or ductile iron) mostly use ductile iron fit- tings. In the last decades the rise of plastic systems has steadily substituted concrete or cast iron water pipes, but not the fittings. Existing technology for produc- ing plastic-fittings is based on injection, which requires very expensive molds and also large amounts of raw material growing exponentially as the diameter in- creases. Therefore, there were no efficient plastic solu- tions for big-diameters and high-pressures. Based on the patented technology of Molecor, cost-ef- fective fittings are now a reality. The competitive advan- tage of ecoFITTOM ® is that the manufacturing system developed byMolecor is cheaper than injection ones, and requires less raw material usage than any other process. Moreover, these new systems have brought about a vast varietyof technical, economic andenvironmental benefits as they proved to be of a higher resistance and efficiency, being ecoFITTOM ® the cutting-edge solution. Based on the results obtained from the Product Envi- ronmental Footprint Test (PEF), PVC-O pipes are ex- pected to have a much lower environmental impact