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Brush
Wellman: Tough Alloys for Tough Environments
by
Jacqueline Louie
More up-time. Greater reliability.
Better design flexibility. These are
some of the reasons that Brush Wellman
Inc. is a global leader in high performance
alloys used in petroleum exploration,
completion and production equipment
worldwide.
A wholly owned subsidiary of Brush
Engineered Materials Inc. (NYSE: BW),
Cleveland, Ohio-based Brush Wellman
has been making high performance materials
for the oil and gas industry for many
years. Most major oil and oilfield
service companies use Brush Wellman
alloys, and the company's business
continues to grow. "But rather
than just rest on that success, we
have tried to listen to, and understand,
the needs of the industry," says
Brush Wellman Industrial Components
Marketing Director for Alloy Products,
Bill Nielsen. Brush Wellman is continually
developing innovative new materials,
including:
ToughMet® 3 A
Brush Wellman's ToughMet 3 A is a
new strip alloy made from copper,
nickel and tin. "This is a material
that people are finding to be very
suitable for wrapping controlled explosives,"
says Nielsen, noting that ToughMet
is used in chargers to perforate oil
and gas wells. "ToughMet creates
very little debris when detonation
occurs, a key factor in allowing production
fluids in the perforated passageway
to easily flow."
ToughMet® 3 AT 110
ToughMet 3 is another new material
created for specific applications
where there is no equivalent. Evaluated
downhole in Alberta, Canada, the ToughMet
3 AT 110 rod has demonstrated resistance
to corrosion, wear and abrasion, particularly
in smooth or polished rods. "The
machinability of this material is
excellent. It cuts twice as fast as
free-cutting steel compared to previous
offerings for such applications,"
Nielsen says. An economical alternative
to more expensive steels, ToughMet
3 resists pitting and other types
of corrosion such as cracking, common
in sour gas wells; it also resists
abrasion and corrosive wear by entrained
solids. "Some of the oil in Canada
is loaded up with solids - sand in
particular - and ToughMet 3 has the
strength to do the job," Nielsen
says. "It's now two years that
these rods have been running in a
test well in Alberta without damage,
whereas some of the steel used has
had to be replaced."
Other ToughMet variations, currently
under development, are tempers of
the alloy that show promise in being
able to provide API specification
numbers 5A and 7 tensile properties
with high levels of Charpy V-notch
impact strength.
ToughMet® 3 TS
Using the same alloy system, Brush
Wellman has developed high strength
tubing used by directional drilling
equipment manufacturers in instrumentation
and battery housings. This alloy is
extremely well suited for sour gas
use, according to standards from the
National Association of Corrosion
Engineers (NACE International), which
last October approved ToughMet 3 for
unrestricted application in corrosive,
or sour oil and gas well service.
ToughMet® Capillary and Umbilical
Tubes
With partner Webco Incorporated, Brush
Wellman found that ToughMet in the
strip form can be continuously seam
welded to make very long lengths of
seam-welded tubing. For example, a
very long coil of small diameter tubing,
a capillary tube, can be fabricated
from this alloy in 20,000-foot lengths,
allowing foaming chemicals to be injected
into a natural gas well. The introduction
of such chemicals has been found to
greatly enhance the output of gas
wells with a high content of water
or brine.
The same tubing has been evaluated
in larger diameter and heavier wall
thickness configurations for tubing
in control umbilicals. For example,
this large device conducts fluids
used in petroleum production, or serves
as a hydraulic circuit controlling
equipment on the sea bed. In a recent
joint industry project conducted by
BPP in the U.K., preliminary data
indicates that ToughMet umbilical
tubes would be a viable alternative
to super duplex stainless steel. "The
ToughMet alloy metallurgy is stable
and has very high resistance to sea
water corrosion," Nielsen says.
"It operates with low friction
with the other parts it is mated with,
which is important for reliable control
valve operation in the deep ocean.
And it resists corrosion by sour well
fluids."
Thread Spacers
Thread Spacers are another Brush Wellman
invention, jointly developed with
Italian firms. A threaded insert that
can be placed in a rotary shoulder
tool or drill pipe connection, thread
spacers allow these kinds of joints
to be created without thread compound.
Made from copper beryllium, Brush
Wellman's bellwether alloy, thread
spacers will not gall the threads
of various non-magnetic steels used
for drill collars and other hardware
in the bottomhole assembly of the
drill string. "So it really offers
two benefits, in that you can eliminate
the use of thread compound, and still
improve the protection of the threads
of these very expensive non-magnetic
components."
Meeting the Industry's Needs
"We have several teams of people
working every day to understand the
industry's needs, and create materials
that will meet them using the unique
knowledge we have developed over the
years," Nielsen says. "We
are encouraged by the progress we've
made toward being a very responsive
supplier of materials, not just from
a technical sense, but from a commercial
sense as well."
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