Re: Re: Polyethylene chemical resistance for medium term liquid hydrocarbon duty

From: <Geoff>
Date: Fri Jun 23 2006 - 20:25:00 EDT

Hi Steve,

I have about twenty plastic text books at my disposal but am yet to find one that suggests that PE should be used for storage of large quantities of hydrocarbons. Sure your PET bottle with metho is OK but bulk storage? I will keep looking.

What Code was used to design the PE pipeline for marine storage? I am interested to know if it comes up again.

Of course polyamides and PE are used frequently here for natural gas reticulation but at low pressure.

regards

Geoff

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Hi Geoff
Fire is a separate issue and not relevant in this case. PE is routinely used for storing gasoline; am told the gas tank in your Ford Falcons is probably PE. I have used HDPE pipe for unloading marine gas oil from oil tanker ships over the last 10 or so years. Not all chemical resistance charts agree about benzene. I am currently storing a small amount of product with no apparent damage - yet. And then again Im not sure if all PEs are the same with regard to chemical resistance. Certainly, I know that the fuel tank on my Solex moped looked like PE, but sure as hell wouldnt weld (after I fell off and broke it). Suspect its a something like a PE/nylon copolymer.
Thanks for your comments; appreciate you letting me know if you find anything else.

Cheers

Steve

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Received on Fri Jun 23 20:25:00 2006

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