Energy
Advanced sealing technologies are continuously evolving, incorporating materials, coatings, and designs to meet the ever-growing demands of the industry and contribute to energy efficiency and sustainability.
Seals play a critical role in the energy industry, ensuring the safe and efficient operation of various equipment and systems. From oil and gas exploration to renewable energy generation, seals are essential components that prevent leakage, contamination, and inefficiency. These innovative solutions are designed to withstand extreme temperatures, pressures, and corrosive environments, providing an effective barrier against the escape of fluids like oil, gas, or chemicals. Whether it is sealing valves, pumps, compressors, or pipelines, the energy industry heavily relies on seals to maintain operational integrity, minimize downtime, and enhance overall system performance. Moreover, advanced sealing technologies are continuously evolving, incorporating materials, coatings, and designs to meet the ever-growing demands of the industry and contribute to energy efficiency and sustainability.
Offshore oil and gas seal standards play a critical role in ensuring the safety and reliability of operations in the energy sector. These standards are designed to address the unique challenges and harsh conditions encountered in offshore environments. With the potential for high pressures, extreme temperatures, and corrosive substances, seals used in offshore oil and gas applications must be able to withstand these demanding conditions without compromising their performance. These standards cover various aspects, including the materials used, the design and engineering specifications, and the testing and certification procedures. By adhering to these rigorous standards, offshore operators can be confident in the integrity of their seals, minimizing the risk of leaks and failures that could have detrimental environmental, operational, and safety consequences.
Seals will also be used in more modern and renewable energy applications, such as Wind Energy, Geothermal Energy and Hydro Power.
For Wind Power, the choice of seal and material used will very much depend on the location of the turbine. As the turbine is exposed to the weather around it, the general applications to keep in mind when choosing your seals are, weather conditions, temperature ranges (-40°C up to 85°c), vibration, corrosion, contaminants and altitude.
Seals used in this application need to either be easy to install or have a long life cycle, this is to prevent as much down time as possible, as that can be extremely costly.
Typical geothermal power application conditions are extreme high temperature requirements, reaching up to 320°C. As well as high pressure requirements, up to 1400 bar.
With the steam that will be flowing through the turbines and the drilling fluids that will be used down hole, as well as needing to seal the drilling bore, a mix of different materials will be needed for each application. NBR is able to expand very well meaning that it will be the best material for sealing the drilling bore with its large radial gaps. Viton/FKM & FFKM will be used in areas with high heat and EPDM will be used in applications near a lot of steam.
Hydro Power stations have heavy duty mechanisms that are used to dictate the flow of the water that is passing through, as well as very high speeds achieved by the rotating turbines.
The initial release of the water in the system requires the seals to have good abrasion and wear resistance because of the high load impact.
The material that will be used will vary depending on the application and a range of different elastomers must be taken into consideration depending on the water conditions. For more heavy duty applications, Rotary seals (often with metal casings) are best suited. whereas for areas where the seal will be have to have a better wear and abrasion resistance, PTFE will be better suited.