A water pipe made from old frying fat, wood pulp and sugar cane residues; for the first time in the Netherlands, such a biobased water pipe is going into the ground. And no, the water won't taste like deep fryers. 'From a chemical point of view, the pipe is exactly the same as the standard PVC pipe, but the raw materials are all biobased,' says Hanneke van de Ven (Sector Director of Distribution at Brabant Water). 'With this project we want to pave the way for more sustainable and biobased materials in the water sector.'
Chip shop
The chip shop looks a bit lost on the vacant lot, where the new Ekerschot residential area will soon be built on the north side of Oirschot. However, the chip shop is not there by accident. It symbolizes one of the raw materials of the biobased PVC pipe: used frying fat. Hanneke van de Ven, Sector Director Distribution - Brabant Water, today lays the first biobased PVC water pipe in the Netherlands to pave the way for the greening of the drinking water network.
'Brabant Water has a reputation as a sustainable company,' explains Hanneke van de Ven. We drive electrically as much as possible, use only green energy and manage our own land for water extraction in the most natural way possible. We are also looking for sustainable options for our drinking water network. We first looked at the opportunities for recycled PVC, but it turned out that it did not meet the high requirements for water pipes. Our pipes must not absorb substances from the soil around them and must not release substances into the water that runs through them. The next step to experiment with more sustainable pipes was to look at the possibilities for biobased materials. We then discovered this biobased pipeline together with our supplier 'Pipelife'.'
Making PVC pipes more sustainable
Making PVC pipes more sustainable is an important development for Pipelife. For the production of the biobased pipes, the raw materials used for the PVC do not come from a fossil source (petroleum), but from renewable sources such as sugar cane, wood pulp and used frying fat. Sugar cane and trees absorb CO2 during their growth and this CO2 is released again when processed into plastic. The net CO2 savings can be up to 90%.
Aart Jan van der Meijden, General Manager of Pipelife Nederland BV: “If the water sector joins forces and expresses the ambition to go all out for bio-based materials, we can really make an impact by helping to accelerate this development. At the moment, biobased materials are still more expensive than 'conventional' materials, but we expect that as demand increases, the market will develop quickly and prices will fall.”
The sequel
The advantage of this biobased PVC material is that it can also be mixed. This means that pipes are partly biobased. Hanneke van de Ven: 'With this first step we want to free up ideas for applications of these biobased materials at Brabant Water, but I can imagine that it is also interesting for other drinking water companies.'
Source: Brabant Water
