What Is The Difference Between Industrial Pipe and Sanitary Tube?

Pipe

Pipe is measured in Nominal Pipe Size (NPS).  This is a standard set up based upon different “schedules”.  The term schedule refers to the wall thickness of the pipe; therefore, a higher schedule number will denote a pipe with a thicker wall and smaller ID.

All pipe schedules of a particular size have the same OD dimension with varying ID.  As the schedule number rises the ID of the pipe gets smaller, yielding a thicker wall.  Pipe is available in a variety of materials such as:  PVC, cast iron or stainless steel.

The table below shows the dimensions of common pipe sizes in different schedules:

Tubing

Tube is measured by the outside diameter [OD] of the tube.  Two inch tubing measures two inches on the outside diameter, four inch measures four inch, etc.  The wall thickness is normally called out as the actual thickness of the wall in gauges.  The gauge number is a number that represents the various wall thickness available in tubing.  The higher the gauge number the thinner the wall.  Standard tube sizes used in the industry are in bold:

Adapting Tube to Pipe

There are a wide variety of stainless steel adapters that will get you from industrial pipe to sanitary tube.  There are male and female NPT X Tri-Clamp adapters, NPT X sanitary butt-weld adapter, butt-weld connection pipe x butt-weld connection tube adapters and many more.  When purchasing adapting fittings using butt-welds, it is necessary to know the SCHEDULE of the Pipe.