LANXESS to exhibit at 2022 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) for the first time

Pittsburgh, PA – The Urethane Systems business unit of specialty chemicals company LANXESS will be a first time exhibitor at this year’s Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), taking place in Houston, Texas, from May 2 to 5. The business will highlight its novel Adiprene® Degrade 80C AQ90A, a degradable material, its extensive Adiprene® LFP and PP portfolio composed of high temperature resistant pPDI based prepolymers and its Ultralast® high performing TPU.

Adiprene Degrade 80C AQ90A can be used to manufacture elastomer components that can be deployed in temporary challenging applications and break down by themselves in warm (from 50 to 93ºC) and wet environments after a defined period of time.

This new prepolymer offers enormous opportunities, particularly in components such as underground fracking sealing elements and plugs that need to withstand considerable pressures in wellbores. The components can carry out their hard work in wet environments at 80°C for six hours without any appreciable deterioration in their high-quality mechanical characteristics. Only then will the PU polymer start to break down. This process leads to the complete degradation of its mechanical material characteristics over just two to three days. And within less than three weeks, it will degrade entirely. Moreover, the degradation rate can be adjusted for specific wellbore conditions. “This means that after they have been used, the components do not need to be fetched out of the wellhead or destroyed there – which results in less work and lower costs,” explained Dr. Matt Burdzy, expert in application development at the LANXESS Urethane Systems business unit.

LANXESS offers the oil & gas (O&G) market an extensive family of high performing pPDI based prepolymers which attends the hardness range from 85A to 61D and are developed to operate in temperatures up to 150°C. Depending on each application’s physical and chemical resistance requirements, polycaprolactone, polyether or polyester based materials are available. The majority of this product line is composed of low free (< 0.1% free isocyanate) prepolymers, providing improved EH&S and processing conditions.

Ultralast® TPUs offer premium performance versus standard TPUs and other high performance elastomers in the most extreme applications.
For materials used in O&G applications, requirements as heat, chemical resistance and superior dynamic mechanical properties are common. Ultralast® TPUs not only enhance performance, but help to extend the life of these demanding components. This portfolio benefits from LANXESS’ low free technology, which provides a more structured morphology that delivers a combination of thermoset-like performance properties with ease of processing, using all traditional thermoplastic methods. The technology is available in a broad combination of different chemical structures to meet various needs.