| Project Detail |
Legacy pipe malfunctions create operating risk and legal liability for utilities, negatively impact system owners’ financial performance, and are costly to gas consumers. Today, repairing legacy pipes involves excavating and replacing them, typically with high-density polyethylene pipe. Replacement costs range from $1-10 million per mile, depending on the pipe’s location (rural vs. urban), complexity of the excavation, and costs for restoring roads. Utilities also incur costs whenever gas service is disrupted for repairs. REPAIR seeks to eliminate the highest cost components, excavation and restoration, by rehabilitating pipes without their removal—in essence, by automatically constructing a new pipe within the old.
Project Innovation + Advantages:
The team led by the University of Delaware Center for Composite Materials will develop a novel composite material feedstock and robotic placement process to fabricate stand-alone structural pipe within existing pipelines with no disruption in gas service. Repair strategies will be developed for straight and slightly curved pipe sections that will be internally wrapped and repaired using a new robotic-based design facilitating continuous placement of the tailorable feedstock material and creating a stand-alone structural liner within the legacy pipeline. A tethered material feeding system supplies the material nonstop, which is placed and UV-cured with the internal Wound Rapid Automated Placement (iWRAP) system. This system is designed for maximum deposition rates, reducing repair time and cost for straight sections. For more complex geometry pipe transitions, such as T-joints, diameter reductions, and steep bends, an inflatable toroidal bladder wrapped in the feedstock material will be inflated to stretch and conform to the pipe geometry and co-cured with the straight/slightly curved pipe sections. If successful, the TuFF iWRAP project would lower costs by 50% .
Potential Impact:
REPAIR seeks to eliminate the highest pipe rehabilitation cost components, excavation and restoration, by repairing pipes without their removal. |
