Seals for challenging conditions

High performance seals such as Viton fluoroelastomers have been used in extraction, refining and upgrading industries for over five decades. 

Later developments include DuPont Kalrez perfluoroelastomer parts which can withstand operating conditions involving attack from a range of more than1800 chemicals, solvents and plasmas, even where temperatures to 327°C (620°F) are involved.

Dichtomatik comments that Viton outlasts nitrile rubber and other general-purpose elastomers and is ISO 9000 registered worldwide. The ability of this product to withstand both high heat and low temperatures as well as attack from aggressive fuels and chemicals, makes it a suitable medium for the production of protective coatings as well as O-rings, together with gaskets in a wide variety of custom shapes and sizes. This versatility ensures that customers can have longer maintenance intervals for production processes, leading to budget reductions particularly for down-hole applications which can involve particularly hard access conditions.

The Kalrez parts are particularly suitable for HTPT seal applications, providing long-term performances over a wide spectrum of oil and gas industry working requirements. These perfluoroelastomer (FFKM) parts are highly resistant to aggressive chemicals and solvents, including sour multi-phase fluids. O-ring seals retain high levels of elasticity and recovery, even after long-term exposures at elevated temperatures. The Kalrez parts for HPHT down-hole environments also provide excellent rapid gas decompression (RGD) resistance. In fact, rigorous third party laboratory testing for RGD resistance have recorded Kalrez 0090 AS568-312 O-rings with the highest rating of 0000 per the NORSOK M-710 Rev 2 standard.

The performance benefits that have been achieved by the DuPont range of products have also extended the MTBR duration from days for some installations to months and even years for other specific applications. These results ensure considerable savings on site downtimes and loss of production, together with savings on manpower costs as plant repair times can be drastically reduced as well as loss of process products through leakages resulting from sealing failures.