Oil & gas applications

Much of the equipment used in the oil & gas industry is subject to an aggressive environment that must not only resist erosion from high velocity fluids containing sand particles and other abrasive media, but it must also be resistant to corrosion damage. The combination of these two factors has caused this industry to migrate towards using more components made from cemented carbide. These components have natural properties that tend to resist such wear resistant mechanisms; however, Hyperion Materials & Technologies has dramatically improved the resistance to erosion and corrosion by focusing on the binder phase of grades used in this field. In order to improve the wear characteristics of the cemented carbide grades used specifically for choke valves in this industry, multi-binder (Ni, Cr, Mo, and Co) corrosion/erosion resistant materials were introduced.

Today, there are more than 100 choke control valves in service using these cemented carbide grades operating in subsea and other extreme environments. These materials have contributed to an improvement of up to 5 times the service life when compared to those of conventional grades. Hyperion has now taken this performance increase to another level. Based on feedback gained from the field and the experiences of equipment design engineers working with these grades, Hyperion has carried out development work focused on improving material toughness and strength. Success has been achieved by carefully optimizing the relationship between wear (material hardness) and toughness for the multi-binder materials without any loss of resistance to corrosion or erosion.