The Hardide-T coating was selected to provide a hard-wearing surface within DeltaTek’s SeaCure ball drop subsea cementing system, which delivers stabbed-in, inner string cementing for subsea wells. When compared to traditional methods, the system significantly reduces cement wastage, delivering substantial CO2 emission reductions.
The ball drop system requires a bespoke seat to be positioned at the bottom of the inner string within the latch-in adaptor. This internal diameter restriction requires a hard-wearing surface to ensure no erosion or corrosion damage occurs while pumping cement.
The internal profiles of the low-alloy steel seats were coated with the Hardide-T nanostructured tungsten/tungsten carbide chemical vapour deposition (CVD) coating. It is developed specifically for heavy duty applications in extremely abrasive, erosive or corrosive environments or in applications involving shock loads where impact resistance is required.
The tested seats showed no signs of erosion or corrosion and the Hardide-T coating is now specified on the SeaCure seat. It has now been used successfully on all SeaCure jobs using the ball drop system in regions such as the North Sea, West of Shetland and the Arctic Circle.
David Shand, chief operating officer at DeltaTek said: “The coating has already been deployed in harsh operating conditions where the system has successfully been pumping up to 3,000 barrels of cement at eight barrels per minute for up to ten hours with no erosion or corrosion noted during post-job inspection.”
Philip Kirkham, CEO of Hardide Coatings said that the coating has been deployed across 16 SeaCure projects from the North Sea to the Arctic Circle.
