ASME B31.1-2022: Power Piping

What is Power Piping?

Power piping, unsurprisingly, is found in electric power generating stations, such as industrial and institutional plants, geothermal heating systems, and central and district heating and cooling systems. This places an enormous amount of stress and pressure on the need to specify and adequately operate these systems, even beyond the stresses and pressure by which the piping intrinsically functions. These interests are reflected in the content of and changes made to ASME B31.1-2022: Power Piping, the standard for these systems.

What is ASME B31.1?

Since any failure in power piping systems not only inhibits the piping’s performance locally but can also result in numerous people losing their power, heat, and air conditioning, it is crucial that these systems adhere to code. ASME B31.1-2022 is this code. As a section of the B31, the overall American Society of Mechanical Engineers Code for Pressure Piping, ASME B31.1-2022 exists as its own document for power piping.

Specifically, it details the design, materials, fabrication, erection, test, inspection, operation, and maintenance of piping systems. Piping used with the Code includes pipe, flanges, bolting, gaskets, valves, pressure-relieving valves/devices, fittings, and the pressure-containing portions of other piping components.

Changes to ASME B31.1-2022

ASME B31.1-2022 revises the 2020 edition of the same standard code for power piping, and, as the key document for the industry, it contains numerous changes crucial for keeping the standard current. In fact, there were so many changes made to this edition that the list of updates in the beginning of the document comprises four pages.

Some featured changes made to the ASME B31.1-2022 revision include:

• New definitions added for arc strike and throttle valve.
• Definitions revised for covered piping systems (CPS) and pipe and tube.
• New Figure 100.1.2-9, “Code Jurisdictional Limits for Piping — Steam Locomotive Boiler With Dome Throttle,” added.
• New Figure 100.1.2-10, “Code Jurisdictional Limits for Piping — Steam Locomotive Boiler With Front-End Throttle,” added.
• Section 104.2, which was previously “Curved Segments of Pipe,” was retitled “Curved and Mitered Segments of Pipe.”
• In 104.3.1(c), “Branch Connections Not Requiring reinforcement,” new paragraphs added for partial penetration welded branch connections NPS 2 ( DN 50 ) and smaller under specific circumstances.
• Figure 104.3.1-2, “Reinforced Extruded Outlets,” was revised in its entirety.
• In Section 110, “Piping Joints,” a sentence was added regarding considering the effects of using materials with different coefficients of thermal expansion.
• Figure 127.4.8-7, “Typical Partial Penetration Weld Branch and Instrument Connections for NPS 2 (DN 50) and Smaller Fittings,” was revised in its entirety.
• Paragraph 129.3.6 was added for the performance of heat treatment, when required after bending or forming, for P-No. 10H materials.
• Numerous tables were updated.

As you can see, these changes are plentiful, and they touch the many facets of power piping covered by the standard document. Users can easily find any alteration made to the ASME B31.1-2022 revision by noting the number (22) in the margin.

Get ASME B31.1-2022

ASME B31.1-2022: Power Piping is available on the ANSI Webstore. Since this is the first part in the series of ASME B31 standards, some might benefit from acquiring the Piping Package, which contains all parts of the ASME Code for Pressure Piping, B31.

ASME B31.1 is also bundled with ASME B31.3-2020: Process Piping as the Power and Process Piping Package.

Changes to B31.1-2020

The previous iteration of the standard for power piping, which was released in 2020, was also a sizable revision. If you are interested in the major changes made to ASME B31.1-2020 from the 2018 edition, we have listed them below:

• Either U.S. Customary (USC) or International System (SI, also known as metric) units may be used with this edition. To emphasize this, the standard contains numerous revisions to SI equivalencies in figures throughout.
• New definitions added for ferrous material, linear indication, rounded indication, maintenance, nonferrous, postweld hydrogen bakeout, and volumetric examination.
• New section 101.2.6 specifies for provision to be made to safely contain or relieve any expected pressure to which the piping might be subjected.
• Design minimum temperature may establish special design requirements and material qualification requirements.
• New sections state that consideration shall be given to how ambient temperature conditions impact the displacement stress analysis and that piping shall be designed, arranged, and supported so as to withstand reaction forces due to fluid pressure and momentum effects during normal operations and anticipated transients.
• New section 101.9, “Reduced Ductility Effects.”
• In-process examination is now covered.
• New section 137.4.6 outlines special provisions for testing piping components and subassemblies, closure welds, and flanged joints.
• New procedures were added as an alternative to hydrostatic and pneumatic testing in new section 137.1.
• The standard now specifies that the repair of covered piping systems (CPS) is to be conducted in accordance with the ASME B31.1 code used for the original construction or to a later edition as agreed by the owner and the jurisdictional authority, if applicable.
• New section 149 outlines rerating piping systems.
• Figure 100.1.2-8, “Code Jurisdictional Limits for Piping — Firetube Boiler,” and Figure 104.8-1, “Equations (15 [Stress Due to Sustained Loads]), (16 [Stress Due to Occasional Loads]), and (17 [Stress Due to Displacement Load Ranges]),” were added, and several other figures were revised.

Changes to ASME B31.1-2018

For users of this standard who need to know the changes made to the 2018 edition, which revised the 2016 version, you can find them here:

• Clarification that, where service requirements necessitate measures beyond those addressed in the code, such measures are to be specified by the engineering design.
• New definitions for austenitizing, heat treatments, subcritical heat treatment, and heat treatments, tempering.
• Revisions to figures for code jurisdictional limits for piping examples to better convey the information they represent.
• New figure on “Code Jurisdictional Limits for Piping – HRSG – Desuperheater Protection Devices.”
• Revised equation for the minimum wall thickness of straight pipe under internal pressure (including seamless, longitudinal welded, or spiral welded and operating below the creep range). In the section featuring this equation, nomenclature has also been alphabetized and W, the weld strength reduction factor, has been added.
• Removed section 104.1.4 from ASME B31.1-2016, which covered equations specific to longitudinal-welded or spiral-welded pipe operating in the creep range.
• Updates to the equation to stress due to occasional loads, which now includes the defined term P_o representing the pressure coincident with the occasional load being evaluated in psi (kPa).
• Inclusion of carbon-molybdenum steel in the list of steels in the carbide phase that may be converted to graphite upon prolonged exposure to high temperatures.
• New subparagraph in the steel section discussing how carbon and low alloy steels can be susceptible to flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) under certain conditions.
• Inclusion of nickel alloys in the calculations for the forming strains of cold-formed areas of components.
• Substantial updates to the section covering inspection and qualification of authorized inspectors for boiler external piping.
• Removed Mandatory Appendix J, “Quality Control Requirements for Boiler External Piping (BEP)” from ASME B31.1-2016.
• New figure displaying the winding angle of filament-wound thermosetting resin pipe.
• New Mandatory Appendix O, “Use of Alternative Ultrasonic Acceptance Criteria.”
• New Mandatory Appendix P, “Metallic Bellows Expansion Joints.”
• Removed Nonmandatory Appendix VI, “Approval of New Materials.”