Borstar® solution for largest-ever polyethylene water pipeline in Pakistan

Borstar® enhanced polyethylene (PE) from Borouge has been selected for pipe in an 800km water supply and environmental improvement project in Pakistan. This is the country’s largest-ever PE pipeline for drinking water. In the first phase of the project, which serves the ancient city of Quetta, 300km of pipes have been installed and came into service in July this year.

Since the city and its surrounding area are subject to earthquakes, PE’s flexibility was a key factor in the Quetta Water Authority’s choice of the material. There have been several quakes in recent times but the worst, historically, was in 1935 when the area was devastated and more than 30,000 inhabitants lost their lives. More recently in 1997 there were thousand deaths and 7.3 on the Richter scale. In the light of experience and known risk it was essential that the pipe material should be able to accept earth movement without sustaining damage.

According to John Webster, Marketing Manager, Borouge: “Pipe flexibility was also important to this project because existing service lines had not been laid in a uniform way and therefore a consistent level of excavation wasn’t possible for the new pipeline.

“Borstar PE pipes provide an ideal solution in these difficult conditions. They’re well suited to laying in rough terrain and are able to withstand high axial and bending loads without pipe or joint failure.”

The pipe converter, Karachi-based Dadex Eternit, in consultation with Borouge, selected bimodal Borstar HE 3470-LS for the project. This high density, low sag, fully compounded black PE 80 grade has a Minimum Required Strength (MRS) of 8.0 and offers improved processability with increased output. This in turn lowered production costs and elevated resistance to both slow crack growth and rapid crack propagation, giving added security during production and over a long service life.

As well as providing new systems, Borstar PN8 SDR17 PE pipes of 90 and 110mm diameter are replacing aging iron pipelines. To heavily congested environments like Quetta, the ease of laying and jointing PE pipes brings the added benefit of reduced disruption to city life during the period of installation.

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