Water depths, seabed conditions, high pressures and high temperatures are all factors that need to be considered when designing systems for deep and ultra-deepwater fields.

Production elements including risers, flowlines and pipelines are particularly prone to temperature reduction, creating the potential for wax and hydrate formation. Hydrocarbons can reach the wellhead at temperatures of 50-90ºC and typically comprise gases, paraffinic material, waxes and, frequently, water.

As the hydrocarbons travel through the system it is inevitable that temperatures will fall, potentially causing wax and gas hydrates to precipitate and become deposited on the flowline walls. This leads to flow rate depletion and, ultimately, choking.

To counter these challenges, Balmoral Offshore Engineering has developed three insulation systems which are used across a range of production disciplines:

Balmoral Supatherm™ and Balmoral SupathermPlus™ are epoxy resin syntactic foam insulation systems developed for the simultaneous provision of buoyancy and/or thermal insulation in hot/wet conditions at temperatures in the range of 90-110ºC respectively.

Balmoral SupathermPlus utilises the same hydrolysis resistance system as Balmoral Supatherm but simply omits the hollow glass microspheres. As well as being immune to hydrostatic compression, this non-cellular material exhibits extremely low water ingress rates and saturation values.

The Balmoral Supatherm range is typically used in flooded modular insulation systems on manifolds, ‘Christmas trees’, hybrid riser towers and flooded sealine bundles.

Balmoral Elastotherm™ is a PU-based system which comprises both syntactic foam and solid elastomer materials. PU syntactic foams are based on the use of pre-formed hollow microspheres suspended in a thermoset PU elastomer matrix.

Applications of PU insulation are typically cast-in-place ‘wet’ insulation on ‘Christmas trees’, manifolds, jumpers, spool pieces and in modular systems for connectors and flange covers.

Balmoral Flowtherm™ and Balmoral FlowthermPlus™ represent two grades of pumpable liquid that demonstrate insulation properties typically found in rigid solid polymer and syntactic systems.

They are gel-based thixotropic materials used to provide insulation and buoyancy in a variety of subsea applications including uplift and insulation in riser towers and can assist with tow-out and installation procedures.

Full material property data can be found at balmoraloffshore.com