WELDING WIRE SELECTED
March 1st 2005

Burntisland Fabrications has chosen ESAB’s OK Tigrod 16.88 Super Duplex welding wire for welding pipework on the wellhead deck of the Buzzard field operated by Nexen Petroleum UK.

Pipe diameters range from half inch to 24in, with the larger sizes having wall thicknesses to 40mm to provide long life despite internal corrosion caused by aggressive chemicals.

Most of the welding is required to join flanges and other fittings to prepared pipes, though there is some end to end joining of pipes that could be up to 16m long.

Most Super Duplex pipework is welded using the TIG process. However, development work has been undertaken at the yard on GSFCAW with a view to improving productivity on the larger heavy wall thickness butt welds. ESAB’s OK 14.27 duplex consumable is used for this purpose with sandwich technique procedures approved and now in production.

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