CIPP) Used in Municipal Gravity Sewers
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EPA/600/R-12/004 | January 2012 | www.epa.gov /nrmrl A Retrospective Evaluation of Cured-in-Place Pipe (CIPP) Used in Municipal Gravity Sewers Office of Research and Development National Risk Management Research Laboratory - Water Supply and Water Resources Division A Retrospective Evaluation of Cured-in-Place Pipe (CIPP) Used in Municipal Gravity Sewers by Erez Allouche, Ph.D., P.E., Shaurav Alam, Jadranka Simicevic, and Ray Sterling, P.h.D., P.E., Trenchless Technology Center at Louisiana Tech University Wendy Condit, P.E., Ben Headington, and John Matthews, Ph.D. Battelle Memorial Institute Ed Kampbell, Tom Sangster, and Dec Downey, Ph.D. Jason Consultants, Inc. Contract No. EP-C-05-057 Task Order No. 58 Ariamalar Selvakumar, Ph.D., P.E. Task Order Manager U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Urban Watershed Branch National Risk Management Research Laboratory Water Supply and Water Resources Division 2890 Woodbridge Avenue (MS-104) Edison, NJ 08837 National Risk Management Research Laboratory Office of Research and Development U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Cincinnati, Ohio 45268 September 2011 DISCLAIMER The work reported in this document was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Task Order (TO) 58 of Contract No. EP-C-05-057 to Battelle. Through its Office of Research and Development, EPA funded and managed, or partially funded and collaborated in, the research described herein. This document has been subjected to the Agency’s peer and administrative reviews and has been approved for publication. Any opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency; therefore, no official endorsement should be inferred. Any mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use. ii ABSTRACT Pipe rehabilitation and trenchless replacement technologies have seen a steadily increasing use and represent an increasing proportion of the annual expenditure on operations and maintenance of the nation’s water and wastewater infrastructure. Despite public investment in use of these technologies, there has been little quantitative evaluation of how these technologies are performing. The major reasons for retrospective evaluation of rehabilitation systems are needed include: data gaps in predicting remaining asset life of pipes and how long rehabilitation techniques can extend that life; and to assess whether the originally planned lifetime is reasonable based on current condition. The goals of this project were to draw attention to the need for this type of evaluation and to develop evaluation protocols that are technically and financially feasible for carrying out these evaluations. The initial project focuses on cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) liners because they were the first trenchless liners (other than conventional slipliners) to be used in pipe rehabilitation and they hold the largest market share. The pilot testing used CIPP samples from both large and small diameter sewers in two cities that were in excellent condition after being in use for 25, 23, 21, and 5 years, respectively. Testing on the liners included thickness, annular gap, ovality, density, specific gravity, porosity, flexural strength, flexural modulus, tensile strength, tensile modulus, surface hardness, glass transition temperature, and Raman spectroscopy. In addition, environmental data was gathered as appropriate including: external soil conditions and pH, and internal waste stream pH. Three of the liners had already been in service for nearly half of their originally expected service life, but overall, there is no reason to anticipate that the liners evaluated will not last for their intended lifetime of 50 years and perhaps beyond. Given the insights provided by the pilot studies, an expansion of the retrospective study is recommended to create a broader database to better define the expected life of sewer rehabilitation technologies. Specifically, it is recommended that the retrospective program be extended to: cover additional CIPP sample retrieval in other cities, pilot studies of other rehabilitation technologies; capture locally interpreted data from other cities; encourage sewer agencies to keep as-installed material test data for later comparison with follow-up testing; and adapt, develop, and/or calibrate non-destructive testing (NDT) methods that could use small physical samples that are easily retrieved robotically from inside the pipe. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This report has been prepared with input from the research team, which includes Battelle, the Trenchless Technology Center (TTC) at Louisiana Tech University, and Jason Consultants. The technical direction and coordination for this project was provided by Dr. Ariamalar Selvakumar of the Urban Watershed Management Branch. The project team would like to acknowledge several key contributors to this report in addition to the authors listed on the title page. The project would not have been possible without the cooperation of the representatives of the City and County of Denver (Lesley Thomas, Wayne Querry, and Randy Schnicker) and the City of Columbus (James Gross II, Mike Griffith, and Dave Canup) for seeing the value of the proposed study and working with the research team to find ways to cover the costs of the sample retrieval and repair of the host pipe and/or liner at each sample site. Thanks also go to Joe Barsoom, former Director of the Sewer Division for the City and County of Denver, who assisted greatly in all aspects of the evaluations in Denver. The city and contractor crews who carefully excavated and/or cut samples are also to be thanked – excellent samples were retrieved that safely made the journey to the Trenchless Technology Center (TTC) and Battelle laboratories for further study. In Denver, Wildcat Construction contributed in-kind support to the retrieval of a liner sample from the brick sewer. The authors would like to thank the stakeholder group members for review of the report (Joe Barsoom, Tom Iseley, Walter Graf, and James Gross II). iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Pipe rehabilitation and trenchless pipe replacement technologies have seen a steadily increasing use over the past 30 to 40 years and represent an increasing proportion of the approximately $25 billion annual expenditure on operations and maintenance of the nation’s water and wastewater infrastructure (EPA, 2002). Despite the massive public investment represented by the use of these technologies, there has been little formal and quantitative evaluation of whether they are performing as expected and whether rehabilitation is indeed cost-effective compared to replacement. The major reasons for an interest in a retrospective evaluation of pipe rehabilitation systems are: • The biggest data gap in asset management for pipeline systems involving rehabilitation is prediction of the remaining asset life for the existing pipe and how long rehabilitation techniques can extend that life. Municipalities have expressed a strong desire for some hard data on the current condition of previously installed systems to validate or correct the assumptions made at the time of rehabilitation. • Since several of the major pipe lining techniques have now been in use for at least 15 years (some nearly 30 years in the U.S. and 40 years internationally), it is a good time to undertake such an investigation to assess whether the originally planned lifetime (typically assumed to be 50 years) is reasonable based on the current condition of the liner. While the long-term goal of the retrospective evaluation effort is to provide significant and credible feedback on performance to the system owners and the engineers who specify rehabilitation and replacement technologies, a few isolated evaluations of projects with a variety of existing and service conditions cannot provide statistically significant data. Thus, the goals for the effort within this project are to draw attention to the need for this type of evaluation and to develop evaluation protocols that are technically and financially feasible for carrying out evaluations of the main rehabilitation and trenchless replacement technologies. The protocols should produce useful results at a cost that municipalities will be willing to pay to participate in the data collection. The subsequent drive will be to encourage municipalities and other system owners to conduct their own evaluations and then to contribute their data to a common database where the results can be aggregated on a national basis. The initial project described in this report focuses on cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) liners because they were the first trenchless liners (other than conventional slipliners) to be used in pipe rehabilitation and because they hold the largest market share within relining technologies. The pilot testing used CIPP samples from both large and small diameter sewers in two cities: Denver, CO and Columbus, OH. For the small diameter (8 in.) sewers in each city, a 6 ft section of pipe and liner was exhumed from a convenient site. For the larger diameter sewers (36 to 48 in. diameter), CIPP liner samples were cut from the interior of the pipe and the liner patched in situ. Testing on the liners included thickness, annular gap, ovality, density, specific gravity, porosity, flexural strength, flexural modulus, tensile strength, tensile modulus, surface hardness, glass transition temperature, and Raman spectroscopy. In addition, environmental data was gathered as appropriate to each retrieval process