Seals for challenging oil & gas environments

22 September, 2016

High performance seals such as Viton fluoroelastomers have been used in extraction, refining and upgrading industries for over five decades.

Typical installations have successfully solved critical sealing problems where elastomers such as nitrile or EPDM have failed to provide an effective long-term sealing performance. Later developments have seen the introduction of DuPont Kalrez perfluoroelastomer parts which can withstand operating conditions involving attack from a range in excess of 1800 chemicals, solvents and plasmas, even where incorporating working conditions up to 327degC (620degF) are utilised.

Long maintenance intervals

Viton is claimed to outlast nitrile rubber and other general-purpose elastomers and is ISO 9000 registered worldwide. The ability of this product to withstand both high heat and low temperatures as well as attack from aggressive fuels and chemicals, makes it an ideal medium for the production of protective coatings as well as O-rings, together with gaskets in a wide variety of custom shapes and sizes. This versatility is said to ensure that user customers can utilise longer maintenance intervals for production processes, ensuring budget reductions particularly for down-hole applications which can involve particularly hard access conditions.

The Kalrez parts are particularly suitable for HTPT seal applications, providing long-term performances over a wide spectrum of oil and gas industry working requirements. These perfluoroelastomer (FFKM) parts are highly resistant to aggressive chemicals and solvents, including sour multi-phase fluids. O-ring seals retain high levels of elasticity and recovery, even after long-term exposures at elevated temperatures. The Kalrez parts for HPHT down-hole environments also provide outstanding rapid gas decompression (RGD) resistance. In fact, rigorous third party laboratory testing for RGD resistance have recorded Kalrez 0090 AS568-312 O-rings with the highest possible rating of 0000 per the NORSOK M-710 Rev 2 standard.

The performance benefits that have been achieved by the DuPont range of products have also extended the MTBR duration from days for some installations to months and even years for other specific applications. These results ensure considerable savings on site downtimes and loss of production, together with savings on manpower costs as plant repair times can be drastically reduced as well as loss of process products through leakages resulting from sealing failures.

www.dichtomatik-kalrez.co.uk