Plastic Piping

Has anyone used PEX piping for their breweries?

I use a line of it to run water from my laundry tub tap to my HLT, but have never considered using it for wort plumbing.

It is food grade for water, both hot and cold.

Can't say about anything else. I would assume that wort would not leach anything out of the plastic, as it is just sugar water, but I wouldn't run near boiling wort through it.

Check the temp limits of it.

PEX is only rated for 180 degrees. Silicone tubing is the norm for hot wort tubing. You can get it from many of the HBT advertisers for about $2 a foot.

I think what I was looking for is polysulfone - has anyone used it for their brewery piping and fittings? http://www.portplastics.com/download/pdf/plastics/tubing/tubing42.pdf

Meadow,

I had a long conversation with US Plastics about this about a month ago. There are two main issues to be concerned with: heat and pressure. Even though the typical brewer's pump does not generate a lot of positive pressure, negative pressure is something to be concerned about (vacuum) when the liquids are being pulled from the pot to somewhere else. So you need a tubing that can withstand that. Then you need something that can handle the temperatures of the liquid being moved around.

We mulled over a couple of options including: polyurethane, norprene, silicone, tygothane. Even though everyone and their mothers uses silicone, we ruled this one out first because a) it's very expensive and b) it does not handle pressure well (it can both balloon and collapse, both bad situations!). Norprene, and Tygothane would both work fine, but they are pretty darn expensive and if I recall one of them you could only get in like 50 foot rolls.

In the end, we ended up settling on two different types of polyurethane based tubing: Urebrade reinforced for the negative side, and Superthane for the positive side (you'll find both on http://www.usplastic.com). These are the most cost effective tubing that will satisfy our temperature and pressure requirements.

Hope this helps!

I've never had 1/8" wall silicone collapse under suction from a march pump. I've only had it ballon when under city water pressure, and that was with a valve shut. It's weakest point would be that it can fold if it's held at a sharp angle, which is easily avoidable.
Silicone may be $2/ft but it is going to last for ages, and you can somewhat see through it.

bendavanza said:

I've never had 1/8" wall silicone collapse under suction from a march pump. I've only had it ballon when under city water pressure, and that was with a valve shut. It's weakest point would be that it can fold if it's held at a sharp angle, which is easily avoidable.
Silicone may be $2/ft but it is going to last for ages, and you can somewhat see through it.

Click to expand...

I have had it collapse to the point of restricting flow but I am running a more powerful pump (LG TE-5.5-MD-HC). Not had it totally collapse.

jcaudill said:

We mulled over a couple of options including: polyurethane, norprene, silicone, tygothane. Even though everyone and their mothers uses silicone, we ruled this one out first because a) it's very expensive and b) it does not handle pressure well (it can both balloon and collapse, both bad situations!). Norprene, and Tygothane would both work fine, but they are pretty darn expensive and if I recall one of them you could only get in like 50 foot rolls.

Click to expand...

You can find reinforced silicone tubing but it is not cheap.

jcaudill said:

In the end, we ended up settling on two different types of polyurethane based tubing: Urebrade reinforced for the negative side, and Superthane for the positive side (you'll find both on http://www.usplastic.com). These are the most cost effective tubing that will satisfy our temperature and pressure requirements.

Click to expand...

Urebrade rated to 175 degrees. If you're worried about PEX why aren't you worried about this stuff? Superthane rated only to 185, so I don't see what you're accomplishing.