Airborne Oil & Gas of the Netherlands has a unique technology for producing thermoplastic composite pipe (TCP) of up to 10 km (6 miles) in length, depending on diameter, that can be applied to a variety of oil and gas applications.

Significantly, the company recently notched up a world fi rst with a deal to supply a TCP flowline for a pilot project offshore Malaysia for national oil company (NOC) Petronas. The deal, which resulted from the successful completion of a three-year qualifi cation program with the NOC, includes the delivery of a 550-m (1,805-ft) TCP fl owline; ancillaries; and offshore installation, engineering and field support. The 6-in. fl owline will be installed in 30 m (98.4 ft) of water and will connect two platforms on the West Lutong Field.

In addition to Petronas, Airborne also is working with Shell, Chevron, OneSubsea, Saipem and many other contractors and operators. Bart Steuten, development manager, said, “We are working on a Shell project for delivery of a downline system for well intervention in Nigeria. We also recently delivered a downline system for IKM Testing that will be used on the Aasta Hansteen Field by Subsea 7 for Statoil.” The TCP downline will be used for the precommissioning of risers and pipelines.

Steuten continued, “We are putting our first pipe in the water for Chevron next year—a jumper for the Alder project in the U.K. North Sea. It is a relatively small-bore pipe, a 120-m (394-ft) jumper connecting a manifold to a wellhead. It is a pilot for Chevron. Once we have installed the fi rst one, they will get to know our products and hopefully more will follow.

“We also are talking to a lot of companies for first flowline applications. People are always anxious to not be first, but as soon as we have the pipe in the water for Petronas, we’re confi dent many will follow.”

Interest in Airborne has been growing, with plastics specialist Evonik recently taking a minority stake. The investment was made jointly with HPE Growth Capital and Shell Technology Ventures.

Aerospace Lift-off
The company itself was founded in The Hague in 1995 by two aerospace engineers who had the idea of using composites not only in their own engineering fi eld but other industries as well.

Near-neighbor Shell then approached them in 1999 with a request to manufacture composite pipe. “That was the start of Airborne starting to develop technology for composite pipe,” Steuten said. “The technology to make continuous pipe from composites didn’t exist at the time. Many people could make short sections of pipe, but what was missing was a way to manufacture pipe in an endless way. That is what Airborne is all about.”

In 2007, after a number of developments in the manufacturing technology, a separate business unit was established—Airborne Composite Tubulars, which was devoted solely to pipe. It later became Airborne Oil & Gas (AOG).

To manufacture its specialty pipes, Airborne has turned to thermoplastics and moved away from traditional thermoset materials, which require a chemical curing oven process that makes it difficult to make continuous pipe.

Steuten said, “Airborne developed a concept of TCP that starts with a plastic tape material. It looks like Scotch tape, but it is a plastic tape with glass fibers embedded in the plastic. The pipe consists of a liner, and then you have multiple layers of the tape material, which is wound around the pipe in a helical fashion. Then it is in situ consolidated, melted together to become one solid wall, and then we top it off with the coating. That gives a solid pipe that can best be compared with a solid steel pipe rather than a flexible or unbonded pipe.”

Airborne uses a number of different materials to manufacture its pipes, including PA12 plastic, polyethylene, polypropylene and polyvinylidene fluoride, depending on the application, temperature and whether it’s to be used for transporting hydrocarbons or not.

Steuten continued, “The plastic is always the same throughout the pipe; otherwise we cannot fuse it. We use one plastic to get the solid wall concept. It is solid, yet it is flexible, and the flexibility comes from the glass fiber and the way we wind the fiber.

“We change the fiber angles to get the optimum pipe design. If we need a pipe that has to be very flexible, we use a design that is plus or minus 55 degrees, and we get a pipe that is optimized for pressure capability and flexibility. If we want a pipe with more tensile capability for deep water and large weights to carry, then we adjust the angle. This way we can tweak the pipe to accommodate specific design needs.”

Advantages
There are three main advantages of AOG’s composite pipe, Steuten said: its strength-to-weight ratio, its flexibility and the fact it is noncorrosive. “The way the pipe is manufactured, it is still flexible and can be spooled. We deliver it on reels. We can make it in endless lengths, and it is very easy to deploy. You don’t need to weld short lengths of pipe.

“Our process is unlimited in length, but what gives the limitation is the capacity of the reels and the carousels here in the factory. We can make 8-in nominal steel pipe in lengths up to 3 km [1.8 miles], which is the biggest we can get on the current carousel. But there are no fundamental impediments to produce longer lengths in the future. If you go to the smaller 4-in. diameter, we can already go to 6 km [3.7 miles] in length.”

For a 5-km (3-mile) flowline on the seabed, two of Airborne’s pipes could be connected using a flange.

For Petronas, Steuten said the attraction of using the TCP solution as a flowline was its noncorrosive nature. “This pipe solves any corrosion problem you may have. There is nothing in the pipe that will corrode. In that area of Southeast Asia there are tremendous corrosion issues, and our pipe is a solution to that.

“The Petronas job has sparked a lot of interest in Southeast Asia. It is a solution for many companies in the area whose pipes are affected by microbiologically induced corrosion caused by H2S [hydrogen sulfide].”

Staircase Strategy
Airborne adopted a “staircase strategy” to get its product into a very conservative and risk-averse market.

“People like new developments, but nobody wants to be first and be responsible for anything that could go wrong in the future with things that have not been tried or tested before,” Steuten said. “We have adopted a staircase approach. We gradually increase the complexity and technical difficulty of an application. We take it step by step and start with relatively easy applications with a lower risk profile.”

One of Airborne’s first projects with Saipem was for a downline for pipeline precommissioning, with the TCP used for pumping water, glycol and air. “This was relatively low-risk, but we could prove the concept and make the client comfortable with our technology. The next step is to move from lower risk to slightly more risk and from a temporary to a permanent operation. The jumper for Chevron is for methanol and vent lines, which is a permanent application for 15 years. We have proven it is good for 15 years. This is another step in the technology staircase,” Steuten said.

According to Airborne, the cost factor is another important element. “We realized that manufacturing composites is more expensive than steel pipe, so we deliberately selected relatively low-cost plastic and glass-fiber materials for our entry strategy rather than high-end plastic materials good for high temperatures,” Steuten said.

The company has qualified its design methodology, manufacturing technology and materials testing with DNV, so it can offer its clients a comprehensive qualification system. DNV has carried out a joint-industry project on TCP with 19 companies, with an industry standard recommended pratice that was issued in November 2015.

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