During construction and fabrication,various grades of carbon steel,alloy steel,and stainless steel are used.To avoid mixing of this material and easy storing and retrieving in the warehouse,piping components such as pipe,fittings,flanges,and valves are color coded.
All most all company has their own color coding system.Pipe Fabrication Institute (PFI) Standard ES-22 provides Piping Materials color coding requirements for most commonly used piping material grades. It also provides guidance on marking location on piping components.
Refer below images for the color band location on piping components.
Pipe Color Code Standard
Oil and gas industries, process industries are complex installation. Piping systems are used in these plants to transport various fluids. These pipelines transport various industrial materials such as gases such as Air, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen etc., liquids such as water, acids, hydrocarbon, toxic materials etc.
Without proper pipe color code, it is extremely difficult to identify the material pipeline transporting. To reduces the safety hazard, reduce the possibility of mistakes in identification and accidents associated with wrong identification of pipeline during the emergency situation, systematic color coding of pipeline and piping system is essential. Uniformity of color marking promotes greater safety, lessens the chances of error and reduces hazards involved in the handling of material inside the pipelines.
There are national and international standard that provides the guidelines for uniform color coding in industries that are used to color code of pipe to identify.
- ASME A13.1 – Scheme for the Identification of Piping Systems
- BS 1710 – Specification for Identification of Pipelines and Services
- IS 2379 – Pipelines Identification Colour Code
These standard uses different color code methodology to identify the pipe material. They use a base color,band color,letters and direction arrow to identify fluid inside the pipeline.
Coloring and identification labels on the pipe should apply in such a way that is clearly visible from the all the approach especially when pipes are overhead. ASME B13.1 and IS 2379 provides guidance on the positions of the labeling.
Pipe Color Code Flow
