Steam Line

To be specific:

• What size?
• What schedule?
• What material?

In general:

• Less fittings
• Less friction loss
• Less welded joints
• Less NDE
  

They allow for thermal expansion/contraction. Sometimes they are described as "spring loops".

Tornado, did you interpret the original posters question to relate to this (http://www.hcn.org/issues/42.21/oil-and-water-dont-mix-with-california-agriculture/image_viewer)?

I thought he or she was just referring to bends in general.

In general, bends allow you to get the steam line where you want it to go, even if you aim it the wrong way to start with.

Just what I was about to say, you beat me to it!

On a related topic: At what point, or length of run,of a system of a steam line is friction a factor in high pressure systems. I'm just picking brains for my education, picking up what I missed in school and work. I never had to design on paper,just make it go from here to there. The proper answer to the question is to prevent catastrophic decompression of the pipe run. Or use more pipe and fittings, raising the engineers fees and more work for union steamfitters.

Well, as the system expands and contracts with changing pressure and temperature, bends allow the pipe to move sideways, upwards and downwards so as to take up the movement without knocking over whatever is at both ends of the pipe due to changes in the pipe's dimensions.

Now, the disadvantage? Greater pressure drop to the steam flowing in the pipe as compared to a straight pipe.

Have a chat with a tame, experienced piping system designer for more information.

My understanding of srik231's question is: "Why are there more "bends" (expansion loops) in steam piping than in other types of piping.

However, since most posters for this forum prefer to use broken English, poor spelling and nonsense acronyms that they just made up, communication is purposefully made much more difficult.

Srik231, try to find a book handbook on piping design, or GOOGLE the words "piping" and "expansion loops".

Research the terms "piping flexibility" and "piping stress analysis"

Piping expansion loops are found much more frequently in steam piping because it is of much higher temperature than other systems in the plant