PE pipe and PPR pipe are two kinds of pipe materials. Different from PVC pipe used for drainage, both PE pipe and PPR pipe can be used for water supply. But in real life, the most common water pipe is PPR, what is the reason? It is mainly determined by the following characteristics.
- Elastic modulus: It affects the stiffness and flexibility of the pipeline
PPR water pipe material is polypropylene, elastic modulus of 850MPa, good stiffness, flexibility is insufficient; PE water pipe material is medium density polyethylene, elastic modulus is only about 550MPa, flexibility is good, but the stiffness is insufficient. In the field of municipal water supply, due to the relatively more complex environment, the pipe needs to have good flexibility to resist impact, so PE pipe is more suitable for the field of municipal water supply. Compared with lower PPR water pipe, it is more suitable for building water supply field because of its good stiffness, poor flexibility and low temperature brittleness.
2.Heat resistance: affects the safe operation of the pipeline
Although PE pipe is very good at low temperature performance, but high temperature performance is not as good as PPR water pipe. In the field of building water supply, especially household decoration, it is necessary to use hot water pipeline. The heat resistance temperature of conventional PE pipe is 60℃, and the conventional temperature of household water supply will be about 50℃. Under this temperature for a long time, the aging speed of PE pipe will be greatly accelerated, not to mention the advantage temperature will be far above 50℃, so PE pipe is not suitable for the transportation of hot water. That’s one of the reasons it’s not usually used for home decoration.
3 Thermal conductivity: affects the thermal insulation performance of the pipeline
The thermal conductivity of PPR water pipe is 0.24, and that of PE water pipe is 0.42, which is nearly twice as high. The lower the thermal conductivity, the better the thermal insulation performance of water pipe will be. If the PE pipe in floor heating, play to its advantages, good heat dissipation indicates that the heat radiation effect is better, but used in hot water pipe, it has become its disadvantage, good heat dissipation, heat loss, pipe surface temperature is higher, easy to hot. As a home decoration water supply, obviously PE pipe is not as reasonable as PPR pipe.
4 Welding performance: affect the difficulty of pipeline construction
In terms of welding performance, PPR water pipe flanging round, while PE water pipe flanging irregular, easy to plug; In addition, PE pipe and PPR pipe welding temperature is different, PPR water pipe is 260℃, PE water pipe is 230℃, the use of PPR water pipe on the market dedicated welding machine often cause over-welding, resulting in water leakage. Moreover, because PE material is easy to oxidize, special tools must be used to scrape the surface of the oxide skin before welding, otherwise it can not form a real sense of integrated pipeline, pipeline is easy to leak. Thus, although both PPR water pipes and PE water pipes can be hot-melted welded, they are not at the same level in terms of standardized operation difficulty. PPR water pipes are easier to operate and more convenient to construct.
