Jennifer Pallanich, senior technology editor, Hart Energy: One of the intriguing things about technology is that sometimes it just goes away. Find out what material scientists at Terves have been up to in this Tech Trends episode with Hart Energy LIVE.

Robert Juran, VP of sales, Terves: We manufacture a unique alloy that we have a patent on that is magnesium based, that we add some specific components to so that the product, the final metal product, reacts to downhole conditions and dissolves. We're basically making a large metal Alka Seltzer. We're truly vertically integrated. We cast our own alloy, we have our own foundry. We have a very large extrusion operation, so we extrude product in tube and rod that a lot of people buy. Raw material stock that they'll use to make product. And then we have a machine shop and so we'll machine the print and make tool components for people, or we'll go as far as actually assembling an entire tool for a company, packaging it up and shipping it to them.

JP: So why would an operator wanna put something like a metal Alka Seltzer downhole?

RJ: In our case, when you make a tool from a dissolvable alloy, the tool simply goes away. So there's no need to do that secondary action where you have to come in and do the clean out and remove all of that residue.

JP: Learn more about the latest dissolvable technology at hartenergy.com/ep.

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