It’s common to use flanges when setting up commercial and industrial piping systems. The right flange fitting can make the pipe system more reliable and easier to maintain. Let’s dig deeper into the importance of flanges.
What Are Flanges?
A typical industrial piping system is made up of numerous different pipes. It would be impractical to set up a piping system with just one pipe. Making and installing the pipe would be a Herculean effort, and maintaining it could prove immensely difficult.
Instead, multiple pipes will be used. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the pipes are firmly and securely connected to one another. Otherwise, you’d be at serious risk of suffering a major spill or other problem. That’s where flanges come in. They can provide tight seals and firmly fasten pipes together.
Flanges need to be able to handle varying pressures. Consider that, according to the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, when natural gas is first piped through transmission lines, it may pass through at pressures of up to 1500 pounds per square inch (psi). Yet by the time it reaches a household, the pressure will have been reduced to under 0.25 psi, which is less than the pressure created by a child blowing bubbles into milk through a straw.
Flanges Allow for Flexibility
Many industrial pipe systems practically look like mazes. You may have to run pipes through hard-to-reach places. You may additionally need to route the pipes around machinery, HVAC ducts, and other obstacles. The right flanges and flange fitting products make this relatively easy because you can cut pipes to practically any size and then attach them with flanges.
Flanges Make Your Piping System Reconfigurable
The industrial piping system you have set up today may not suffice a few years down the road. If you install new machinery, for example, you may need to reroute your pipes to fit in the machinery and connect it to your piping system. Flanges make it much easier and quicker to reroute pipes as needed.
Maintenance Is Much Easier With Flanges
If there’s a jam in your piping system, you can pin down where the system is clogged up. Then you can remove the clogged-up pipes and clean them. Conversely, if your piping system were made out of one large pipe, you might have to cut the pipe or push something like a pipe cleaning snake through the system.
As you can see, the benefits of flanges are numerous. Are you looking for professional-grade flange fitting services? If so, contact Lynco Flange & Fitting today.