Pipes.One - Technology for Onsite 3D Welding Production of Lengthy Large Diameter Polymer Pipes with Cellular Walls

Project Information

Pipes.One

Grant agreement ID: 101011217

DOI

10.3030/101011217

Project closed

EC signature date 6 October 2020

Start date 1 November 2020

End date 31 October 2022

Funded under

• PRIORITY 'Societal challenges

Total cost

€ 1 839 862,00

EU contribution

€ 1 287 903,00

Coordinated by

PRYVATNE PIDPRYIEMSTVO DOMINION
Ukraine

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Pipes.One (Pipes.One - Technology for Onsite 3D Welding Production of Lengthy Large Diameter Polymer Pipes with Cellular Walls)

Reporting period: 2021-11-01 to 2022-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Leaks in large diameter pipes is one of the most important problems in the water supply chain since they account for more than 50% of total water loss that amounts to 6.58 billion EUR annually. The OECD estimates the investments into water infrastructure to be around 2.5 trillion EUR for 2010-2030 or 124 billion EUR per year. It suggests a large market for Pipes.One as a novel solution for water supply and water sewerage infrastructure.

Pipes.One developed by Dominion, is a technology for onsite 3D printing production of polyethylene pipes and constructions – a solution enabling to produce lengthy large diameter pipes with cellular walls at the place of laying. The technology is a combination of patented cellular wall pipes design and unique equipment for onsite 3D printing production. It delivers outstanding opportunities for future market applications through the synergy of innovative pipe design and unique manufacturing method. It creates an incomparable combination of technical and economic benefits, such as lean production that allows deep customisation and the ability to produce pipes of larger diameter, expand the scope of recycled material thanks to the protective coating of the pipe surface, resistance to adverse conditions and pressure, significant reduction of joints’ amount, associated installation costs, and reduction of transportation cost.

Pipes.One solution for onsite 3D printing production of pipes will disrupt the traditional pipes production market by providing special more equipment. Breakthrough mobile technology for the production of industrial plastic pipes right at the construction site makes polymer pipelines projects implementation more efficient: cheaper, faster, greener, with improved quality.

In the EIC Accelerator project, Pipes.One redesigned the existing prototype in order to increase its working efficiency and further integrated it into the mobile trailer. As a result Pipes.One developed the final version of user-friendly mobile trailer solution and construct a ready-to-use unit to be subject to testing and piloting. Piloting of the solution will allow examining technical characteristics of the final product to indicate the critical issues and main features of the mobile trailer, explore the room for the subsequent improvement of the product and prepare the ground for commercial implementation of the product.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the first year of the project, Pipes.One achieved important milestones in developing its product and carried out a major amount of the preparatory work for the pilot projects. As part of WP2 implementation, the modification of the pipe-producing component of the mobile trailer was carried out. The test use of the prototype of pipe producing component revealed room for improvement in the welding line of the mobile trailer. Modification of the welding line component ensures higher flexibility of mechanism's shifting between different diameters of pipes, increasing the efficiency of raw material use and quality of pipes.

As part of the implementation of Work Package 3, the original idea of a mobile trailer - a semitrailer - was completely redesigned. Redesign of the configuration of the mobile trailer was performed with respect to the real architecture of an industrial element, potential needs of users, limits imposed by requirements to the mobile trailer concept. From the concept of placing all the components of the system in one module of the semitrailer, we came to the division of the mobile workshop into functional elements. The isometrical container was adopted and reconstructed to develop a safe and user-friendly environment for the mobile trailer and to create working space inside the transportable isometrical container.
The production element has been modified to increase the maximum diameter for mobile production from the planned 1600 mm to 2000 mm. In addition, the welding element has been redesigned and consumes almost 5 times less electricity for the same production capacity.

Finally, the final version of the mobile trailer was assembled. Its performance was verified in several tests right in the production premises. The actual architecture and configuration of the mobile trailer solution was finalized and it is ready to be subject to piloting.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Unique Pipes.One mobile solution allows to produce pipes with cellular wall and improved life-cycle performance even in comparison with other structured polymer pipes. The following critical advantages of Pipes.One can be highlighted:
• Efficient use of raw materials: up to 2x reduction in comparison with extrusion pipes, due to the new design of the pipe wall profile results in a lower weight of the pipe and lower cost of the final product.
• Quality improvement: a significant increase in the quality of products due to the multilayer and architectural structure of the pipe wall, resulting in increased capacity, shockproof and anti-deformation properties, pipe resistance to environmental effects, increased rigidity, thermal conductivity and mechanical strength.
• Universality of the pipe application due to the use of various external and internal layers.
• Ease of installation: up to 10x reduction of installation costs.
• Up to 9x decrease in transportation costs and environmental impact (reduction of CO2 emissions).
• Higher life-cycle performance: reduce pumping costs by minimizing the number of welds and surface roughness and depreciation costs through high abrasive resistance.

Pipes.One project implementation is closely related to EU Green Deal objective “Sustainable industry” due to the following characteristics of Pipes.One solution:
• Decrease in raw materials and energy consumption in the production process - the use of Pipes.One equipment to produce innovative pipes allows up to 2x reduction in the weight of the pipe compared to extrusion pipes and a corresponding reduction in the consumption of feedstock, which entails a reduction in energy consumption for the production of this raw material. This leads to an annual decrease in CO2 emissions of approximately 1.5 times.
• Decrease in diesel fuel consumption during transportation - using the innovative Pipes.One equipment set allows dividing the process of manufacturing polymer pipes into 2 stages. Due to this division of production, there is no need to transport finished pipes from the manufacturer to the construction site. They can be produced continuously at the installation site thanks to the mobile equipment based on an autotrailer using a lengthy thermoplastic profile.
• Decrease in energy consumption in cutting and welding processes – due to the above mentioned continuous production at the installation site, there is no need to cut pipes into pieces of 6 - 12 l.m. in the production of pipes at the factory with subsequent delivery and weld individual pipe pieces at the pipe laying site to form the pipeline. Such optimisation of energy-consuming processes decreases the CO2 emissions by 10 times.
• Decrease potential leaks in large diameter pipes – due to the continuous production of pipe without joints of individual elements, the risk of leaks and pipeline ruptures is reduced.

Pipes.One polymer pipe production process

Pipes.One polymer pipes factory on wheels

Pipes.One mobile trailer view throuth the Pipes.One pipe