Success Stories
Gas Utility Saves With Composite Repair
Special To Pipeline & Gas Journal
People’s Gas, Florida’s largest natural gas provider recently utilized NRI Syntho-Glass®XT for a 1,236-psi API 5L X60 ERW pipe riser with 28% wall loss at the ground to air interface.
Shutting down was not an option with this DOTregulated riser station that is located in a residential area next to an interstate highway. The repair had to be engineered to accommodate a girth weld and a 45-degree elbow to ensure complete restoration, which was achieved using Syntho-Glass®XT with minimal application time and no need for any elaborate respiratory equipment.
The composite system has no odor or VOCs- unlike other prefabricated coil systems that require mixing of resin & catalyst in the field. Syntho-Glass®XT is a unique, applicator-friendly, water-activated composite that is manufactured in NRI’s ISO9000-2001 facility with calibrated fiber-to-resin ratios of the composite, ensuring the field performance meets the laboratory results which field wet-out composites can’t be sure of.
The pipe was restored with a loadtransfer epoxy putty used to fill all pits and other anomalies, effectively transferring the hoop load from the pipe into the composite repair system as the riser cycles from 570 psi to 800 psi daily. The customer was comfortable with this application as the XT system has been thoroughly tested in the lab, to prove that at 75% wall loss it can accommodate more than 160,000 cycles.
Syntho-SubSea®, a high-compression strength Kevlar®-filled epoxy, was applied over the load-transfer Syntho-Steel® putty, locking out all atmospheric conditions. The Syntho-Glass®XT fiber-glass composite sleeve was wrapped around the damaged section of pipe, providing structural integrity.
The Syntho-Glass®XT system fully restored the pipe’s hoop and axial strength to enable operation at full maximum allowed operating pressure, according to ASME PCC-2. Syntho-Glass®XT saved thousands of natural gas home owners from being without service. The gas transmission company saved time, money and maintained good public relations where traditional methods of pipe repair would have proven costly and timeconsuming. P&GJ
