Pressure and flow recovery: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Turbo-expanders, in-pipe turbines and pressure exchangers recover energy that gas pipelines, water networks and desalination plants would otherwise throw away. Cost is equipment and installation; value is the electricity saved, so power prices and throughput drive it.
No public price Pressure and flow recovery has no public monthly price series: Bespoke equipment sold per site; no public price series.What its price moves with
High-pressure gas is reduced to distribution pressure at letdown stations, and turbo-expanders there can make power instead of wasting the pressure. More gas flow and higher power prices raise the return. This technology has no price series, so no statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Pipelines carry gas at high pressure over long distances, and every city gate is a potential site for expanders. Network operators decide whether to invest, often under regulated returns. Gas flow through each station must be steady enough to justify the equipment.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Reverse osmosis desalination pushes seawater through membranes at high pressure, and pressure exchangers recover most of that energy from the brine. This cut the energy cost of desalinated water, and in-pipe turbines do similar work in water mains.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Top-pressure turbines on blast furnaces are the largest single use of pressure recovery in industry. Their spread follows steel output and new furnace building, especially in China and India. The recovered power can cover a meaningful part of a furnace's own electricity needs.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Expanders and in-pipe turbines drive generators to turn recovered pressure into electricity. Standard generator prices form part of project cost, so electrical machinery costs feed into the economics. Small sites often use standard pumps run backwards as turbines to keep costs down.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Steelworks combine top-pressure turbines with heat and gas recovery, so these projects are often planned together. Gains in one improve the case for the other within the same plant upgrade.
No public price for steel plant energy recovery, so the link is explained in words only.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.