CRA Lined Pipe - A reasonable economical solution for pipeline / flowline on highly corrosive environment

This article is intended for knowledge sharing related to CRA Lined pipe based on my personal knowledge and
experience. Please feel free to add / comment or share it if you think this would benefit others.

When we design a pipeline or flowline, we need to understand first the service that will be applied to the line i.e.
flow rate, pressure, temperature, corrosivity, etc. and then after calculation and consideration we can come out with
required material, diameter, thickness, configuration, etc. The typical understanding is the more corrosive service
medium flowing in the pipe, the more ‘exotic’ or advanced material need to be used. And the more pressure applied
will result in higher pipe thickness required.

Now imagine that based on the design process, a 20km gas pipeline would require Alloy 825 material (Considered
resistant to the service), 16” pipe diameter and 25mm pipe thickness. We would make comparison if the pipeline is
made by full Alloy 825 or made by CRA Lined pipe with API 5L X60 as backing material.

Just for Clarity, CRA Lined Pipe Refers to pipe manufactured by mechanically expand, fit or install (“mechanical
bond”) CRA layer to a different material as its backing steel. The corrosion resistant layer on the inside will give
protection to the fluid service while the backing steel will provide the mechanical performance.

The comparison will be made based on the following assumption and condition:

- We will only compare the material price as the manufacturing cost could have wide difference from one
manufacturer to another and also specific requirement of the owner
- Alloy 825 pipe price is US $18,000-$20,000 / Ton – we will use $19,000 / Ton as our calculation base
- API 5L X60 pipe price is US $1000 / Ton
- Alloy 825 is having 8,140 kg/m3 weight and Minimum yield strength of 25-35 Ksi – we will use 30 Ksi as our
calculation base
- API 5L X60 is having 7,680 kg / m3 weight and minimum Yield Strength of 60,2 Ksi – we will use 60Ksi as our
calculation base.
- We will use 3mm Alloy 825 as inner layer of the CRA Lined Pipe. Strength of Alloy 825 layer in the CRA Lined pipe
is neglected in the calculation for easy comparison

Here is the comparison:

Material Solid Alloy 825 pipe CRA Lined Pipe (CS+Alloy

825)
Yield Strength (Min) 30 Ksi 60 Ksi
Required Thickness 25 mm 12.5 mm + 3mm
Nominal Pipe Size 16” 16”
Total Tonnage per pipe 3.12 T 1.47 T + 0.35 T
(12m)
Material Cost per pipe USD 59280 USD 8120
Total tonnage for 20km 5200 T 2450 T + 583 T
pipeline
Pipe Material Cost for USD 98,800,000 USD 13,527,000
20km

From the above comparison, we could see that material cost for solid Alloy 825 is about 7 times of the CRA Lined
Pipe. The cost comparison will be wider with higher material volume and narrower with lower material volume.

Furthermore, recent manufacturing technology has allowed CRA lined pipe made by mechanical process to be more
friendly to installation process as it can offer controlled end dimension allowing perfect fit up which would be very
helpful during installation process, especially when automatic welding is utilized as installation method
Despite the manufacturing cost that will have some difference and installation cost that might also have some
difference, we can simply see that CRA lined pipe could be the A reasonable economical solution for pipeline /
flowline on highly corrosive environment.

Some of you which has earlier understanding about this subject may also think difference, benefit and weakness of
Mechanical Lined Pipe compared to Metallurgically Clad Pipe. I will write about this on separate article and will be
published soon, InSyaaALLAH.

Jakarta, 18 November 2019

Fatkhy Baridwan