Magma Global, a provider of carbon-fibre composite pipe, today announces it has added Shawcor’s Thermotite® ULTRA™ insulation to its m-pipe® offering. It will be primarily used to improve flow by maintaining the temperature of production fluids. Additionally, the insulation material can be adjusted to add weight or buoyancy to manage stability of the pipe in the water column. The insulated product is currently in qualification for use in jumpers for a project in the North Sea and in the Ocyan CompRiser design.
Magma sought to further improve the thermal insulation properties of m-pipe in order to maintain flow temperature for a number of current projects. Magma identified Shawcor’s Thermotite ULTRA for the required thermal insulation to achieve this. It is a styrene alloy subsea insulation system designed specifically for flow assurance in subsea environments for use in ultra-deepwater. The insulation layer allows the pipe to retain the ability to be transported and deployed on standard reels.
The ability to manage pipe stability through adding buoyancy or weight directly into the insulation material improves the potential simplicity of each design thus reducing engineering and installation time on designing and building buoyancy and ballast modules. This is of particular interest for flowlines, jumpers and pure carbon fibre riser designs.
The product will first be applied in the evaluation of m-pipe jumpers in Norway. In this case the Shawcor insulation layer is cast moulded at a 45 mm thickness providing a U-Value of ≤ 5.0 W/m2K. This retains consistent flow temperature in water temperatures of 2°C which is important to maintain a good flowrate and minimise build-up. Once qualified, the collaboration calls for Shawcor expertise and a cross-head extrusion line to be integrated into the main m-pipe production line at Magma Global’s manufacturing site in Portsmouth, UK.
Tony Duncan, Executive VP at Magma, said: “Integrated insulation and ballast are an important part of Magma’s strategic roadmap towards the all-composite riser. We undertook a thorough evaluation of what would be the right solution for our customers’ needs; Shawcor is the market leader and this product has given us excellent results. We look forward to having the ability to extrude insulated m-pipe in Magma’s facility and fully managing production in-house.”
Kevin Reizer, President of Shawcor Pipeline Performance, said: “I am very pleased with the announcement of this collaboration agreement with Magma. It reflects Shawcor’s contribution of technical, material science and processing expertise to advancing the industry. The Thermotite ULTRA product platform continues to prove its value to industry stakeholders. We look forward to engaging with the offshore TCP market leader on these new opportunities.”