Polypropylene pipe: It’s lightweight, long-lasting, easy to work with...
Polypropylene pipe: It’s lightweight, long-lasting, easy to work with...
Like all beverage manufacturers, craft breweries are equipment heavy operations. In addition to the typical business challenges of competition, staffing, regulation, compliance and COVID-19, craft brewers also must build a significant internal infrastructure to create and deliver their products. This means purchasing (among other items) kettles, kegs, boilers, bottling and canning lines, conveyors, cooling systems, storage tanks, fermentation tanks, refrigeration equipment and wastewater operations. In this article, we’ll discuss how breweries can efficiently connect all those systems with the perfect piping infrastructure.
Piping transformation
While many elements of the brewing process have endured for centuries, the piping industry has transformed the efficiency and reliability of the systems used to produce and transport products. Just as many brewery owners are making their marks with exceptional, unique products, polypropylene piping is revolutionizing the way craft breweries are piped. Applications for polypropylene include glycol lines, domestic water, compressed air, heating and cooling and CO2 lines. Some polypropylene pipes that are NSF/ANSI 51-listed for food-grade applications can even be used to transport the finished product. As a chemically inert material, polypropylene will not leach into or affect the taste or smell of the liquids it is transporting.
A significant upgrade
In many craft brewery applications, polypropylene represents a significant upgrade from metal pipe such as copper or steel. Polypropylene does not react with water, glycol or other products and ingredients found in breweries. It will never scale or corrode, and it does not become brittle over time or fail when exposed to extreme temperatures.
Traditional piping materials either require welding, which can be time-consuming, expensive, and may release harmful VOCs into the environment, or rely on foreign substances (such as glue or solder) or mechanical connections (such as gaskets and threads) to join the pipe and fittings. Polypropylene pipes, on the other hand, are joined using heat fusion, a fast, reliable process that makes seamless connections. To form a connection, the material is heated, joined together under pressure, then allowed to cool. The joined materials become one solid and homogenous piece with no leak paths. When properly installed, operated and maintained, polypropylene pipe has an anticipated lifespan of 50+ years.
Additional benefits
Polypropylene is up to 70 percent lighter than steel pipe (depending on the size and wall thickness of the pipe) and, with the proper heat fusion tools, can be easily installed in overhead locations common to breweries with fermenting vats.
To accommodate system expansions as craft breweries grow, polypropylene offers fusion outlets that can be added by drilling into the pipe and heat-fusing a fitting directly into the pipe wall. Many brands of polypropylene pipe are stabilized for both high and low temperatures and are safe for use in almost any part of a system. In addition, the pipe’s inherent R-value of 1 or higher (depending on the wall thickness of the pipe) can eliminate the need for insulation or reduce the amount of insulation required, especially on glycol lines.
By way of background, certain parts of the brewing process require temperatures as low as 24°F. This requires brewers to use glycol in lines that connect the process chillers to the fermenting vats. They key is to find a material that can transport the chilled fluid without using fluxes or glues. The flux used when brazing copper can cause impurities in the line, and glycol can degrade the glue that is used to join certain other piping materials (such as CPVC). That makes heat-fused polypropylene pipe an ideal fit.
In addition, polypropylene’s heat fusion process can be taught, in just a few hours, to virtually anyone who has mechanical aptitude and an understanding of piping systems. Along with skilled support and oversight, this can enable breweries to train their own personnel on heat fusion installations or repairs.
Finally, as many craft breweries and their customers are environmentally aware, they can appreciate the fact that polypropylene pipe is cleaner to manufacture than steel pipe and also is 100 percent recyclable at the end of its long life.
Real-world results
Polypropylene pipe has been selected by craft brewers across North America. Comments from the brewers themselves attest to the effectiveness of polypropylene in brewery applications.
“As a startup, you need to save money when you can, and labor is an area where we could do that,” said Adler Lentz, a partner in Smith & Lentz Brewing Co., Nashville, where polypropylene pipe was selected for the brewery’s glycol cooling system. “The quote for copper was about $20,000, and for a startup that is a big chunk of change. So, when we got that quote we looked at other options. And that is when it started to make sense that we should use [polypropylene] and do the installation ourselves. We saved about $12,000 by doing this.”
Eventide Brewing, Atlanta, selected polypropylene for its glycol cooling system.
“We have experienced zero leaks, not even a little leak,” said Nathan Cowan, CEO. “Our next project will be 10 times the size of what we have now, and we plan on using [polypropylene] when we expand.”