Curing for Down-The-Hole Drilling: Part 1

Posted: Jun 15, 2018 | Categories: Out-of-Autoclave Composite Curing

We continue our series on products that require curing by stepping outside of your home and exploring another area dependent on curing. As you hop into your car and head to the gas station, you use more products that rely on curing during production – products supplied by the oil and gas industry. 

The oil and gas industry relies on pipes and other equipment to transport their products up and out of wells, to refineries, and to consumers. These pipes must be durable and capable of standing up to climate extremes, caustic fluids, and flammable substances. Pipes must also be capable of carrying fluids of varying thicknesses and viscosities; special coatings help these fluids move more efficiently through pipes. 

Pipes and their coatings often need to be cured, which seals the coatings and improves the function and efficiency of oil and gas industry pipes. A curing oven is used for this process and can vary in size based on the size of the piping. 

What is Down-The-Hole Drilling? 

To extract and refine the oil and gas you use in your car, workers in the petroleum industry must drill into the ground to tap the earth’s resources. This often requires drilling through hard rock. Oil and gas workers use a variety of methods to drill through the ground and move crude oil to the surface. 

Oil industry professionals use a method known as down-the-hole (DTH) drilling to create high-quality holes through almost any type of hard or soft rock. A down-the-hole (DTH) drill is like a miniature jackhammer attached to the bottom of a drill string. The rapid jackhammer action of a DTH drill smashes large chunks of rock into tiny bits of dust. Air exhaust from the DTH hammer blows away the dust. Workers join drill pipes together one by one as the drill moves deeper into the bedrock. Together, the pipes create a drill string. The DTH drill connects to the bottom of the drill string. 

The down-the-hole drill method is one of the quickest ways to bore through hard rock for gas or oil, but it is hard work requiring tough and sturdy tools. Steel makes for a strong and sturdy pipe, but uncoated pipes are vulnerable to corrosion. Climate, the specific properties of the oil or gas flowing through the pipeline, product flammability, and the rate of oil or gas flow increase the risk of corrosion. Curing the pipes in an industrial oven after coating them gives them the durability and strength to hold up to many years of use. Coatings may differ for pipelines intended for installation underwater, underground, or aboveground.  

Curing ovens for pipes used for down-the-hole drilling come in a variety of configurations. Some common types of curing ovens used for oil and gas are top load ovens, chain conveyor ovens, and custom batch ovens. Wisconsin Oven offers several options of curing ovens for many applications. Available in both batch and conveyor configurations, our curing ovens are designed to meet your specific requirements. For more information on our curing ovens, contact our sales team at sales@wisoven.com.  

For more information like the above, follow Wisconsin Oven on FacebookLinkedIn, and Twitter, and be sure to check back next month for Part-2 of this blog series. 

Tags: curing adhesives, curing ovens, Industrial composite curing batch ovens, composite curing, powder curing

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