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| Innovative Borcoat polypropylene coating  Borealis has developed innovative Borcoat polypropylene materials that thermally insulate the flowlines and risers serving the deep water Thunder Horse Field. This project uses the world’s largest semi-submersible production platform operated by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Designed to carry up to 250,000 barrels per day, the Thunder Horse Field flowlines posed a major technical challenge. At subsea depths of 2,200 metres the flowlines are exposed to extreme external pressure and low temperatures. Combined with a flowing oil temperature of 132°C, this presented a huge thermal insulation challenge. In such deep water, normal foam insulation solutions are not feasible as the water pressure causes foam to collapse and lose its thermal properties.The first of the 7-layer system is a fusion bonded epoxy primer, the remaining 6 layers are made up of a range of Borealis Borcoat products. The combination is new in its entirety and some grades have been specifically developed for the Thunder Horse application. To one of these new Borcoat products, Thermotite, a division of Bredero Shaw, adds glass spheres during the extrusion process to create a syntactic polymer. The syntactic polymer layer acts as a thermal barrier and as thermal insulation on the risers. Also unique is the combination of two Borcoat grades that are mixed together with a blowing agent to create high strength foam, which further increases the flowlines’ insulation and resistance to extreme sea pressure. This combination of syntactic and blown foam is known as the Thermotite 7-layer system. Through the combination of existing and newly developed products, Borcoat enabled the design of the multi-layer solution to meet the necessary strength and stiffness requirements, as well as the stable thermal insulation performance during operation of the flowlines. write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Construction News :: home page |