Application of Titanium in Offshore Oil and Gas Development

Titanium is a material with excellent physical properties and stable chemical properties. Titanium and its alloys have high strength, small specific gravity, seawater corrosion and marine atmosphere corrosion, can well meet the requirements of people in the application of marine engineering. After many years of titanium industry and marine engineering application researchers, titanium has been in the marine oil and gas development, harbour construction, coastal power stations, desalination, ships, marine fisheries and ocean thermal energy conversion and other fields have achieved a wide range of applications. Now, titanium for marine engineering has become one of the main areas of titanium civil applications.
Oil is the lifeblood of a country's economy. It is estimated that the world's exploitable oil resources amount to 300 billion tonnes, of which the seabed oil reserves amount to about 130 billion tonnes. The development of seabed oil began at the beginning of the 20th century. Its development has gone through the process from offshore to offshore, from shallow sea to deep sea. Due to the limitations of technical conditions and material development, initially, only oil and natural gas deposits extending directly from the coast to the shallow sea can be exploited. since the 1980s, stimulated by the energy crisis and technological advances, offshore oil exploration and development has been developing rapidly, and offshore oil development is rapidly advancing to the continental shelf, gradually forming a brand-new offshore petroleum industry sector. Offshore drilling platform is the implementation of submarine oil and gas exploration and exploitation of the working base, it marks the level of submarine oil and gas development technology. Offshore oil extraction equipment mainly includes oil extraction platforms and ancillary equipment, ancillary equipment include crude oil coolers, oil lifting pipes, pumps, valves, joints and clamps. These equipments are in contact with seawater and sulfide, ammonia, chlorine and other media in crude oil. Because titanium has excellent corrosion resistance in these media, so the United States in the early 1970s in its oil fields in the use of titanium manufactured offshore oil platform struts, while titanium manufactured tube heat exchanger and plate heat exchanger. Titanium tube heat exchangers use seawater as a cooling medium to cool the high temperature vapour/oil mixtures pumped from the oil wells. Titanium plate heat exchangers also use seawater as a cooling medium to cool the fresh water that cools the crude oil in a carbon steel heat exchanger. Approximately 100 titanium heat exchangers are used in the United States on oil rigs in the North Sea. The titanium components ordered by Hunting Oilfield Services in Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, are said to be the world's first titanium high-pressure riser shaft.

Petroleum titanium alloy titanium drilling pipe has a long service life - half the weight of stainless steel, twice the flexibility of stainless steel, and 10 times the service life of steel. These excellent properties make titanium an excellent material for drilling difficult, near-circular, deep wells. Combination drilling tools containing titanium drill pipe can dramatically reduce drilling time and total drilling costs.