TECDOC-01SEPTEMBER 2008

TECHNICAL

 

DOCUMENT

 

ON

 

INSTRUMENTATION

 

TUBING

 

AND

 

THEIR

 

CONNECTIONS

 

Instrumentation Technical Document Series

 

By: Nirbhay Gupta

 

 

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REFACE 

 

Instrumentation design and construction is a very interesting proposition. One is supposed toknow the electronics and electrical aspects as well as the mechanical aspects too.Instrumentation tubing is one such field where an instrumentation engineer has to don therobes of a mechanical engineer. In NPCIL, for a long time, it was felt that there is no singledocument that can cater to the needs of budding as well as practicing engineers when theywant to search some information on instrumentation tubing and connections.Instrumentation tubing covers both Impulse tubes (sensing lines) as well as pneumatic tubes.Connections include tapping points, root valves and tube fittings. Usually one has to refer tomyriad technical documents, codes and standards to search for a specific aspect of tubingdesign or construction. This technical note is an attempt to put all the information at oneplace. The efforts have been put to expose the reader to all the aspects of tubing and makehim aware of all the developments in the world. A comprehensive list of all the referencedocuments is given at the end and they have been liberally used while preparation of this notewas underway. Effort has been made to represent all the relevant information here however,enterprising readers will benefit even more if they peruse the reference documents directly.Attempt has been made to demonstrate analytically that if the design and installationpractices are followed as per this note then the sensing line will meet the intent of class-Itubing. Readers may note that the word tube/tubing used here should be inferred asinstrumentation tubing only limited to maximum

1”

size.It may be noted that various tubing practices have not been discussed in this note. Thedetailed installation practices for various process measurements will be discussed in respectiveprocess measurement/field installation technical notes. However, salient issues common to allinstallations have been discussed in detail.Author is grateful to a large number of engineers with whom they had an opportunity to workwith during their long career in NPCIL and on the way a lot of design aspects were concluded.Nirbhay Gupta23

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September, 2008Mumbai