Copyright Trelleborg AB
BUOYANCY MODULES
 Floating units to maintain drilling risers, cables and umbilicals of offshore drilling platforms at preferred
geometriccon igurationsinordertoavoidmechanicalfailuresduetotheirdeadweightandoceancurrents
 Composite products made of hollow glass microspheres or expanded polystyrene spheres (EPS) with illed
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syntheticfoams
 Sizeasbigasahumanbeing
 Maximumoperationdepthratingof3’000m
1.Offshoreoildrillingplatform
2.Buoyancymodules
3.Drillingpipes
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Developing a Low Cost Ceramic Buoyancy Sphere
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CeraSphere PROJECT
 Ceramic‐basedhollowthin‐walledmacrospheres
 Future replacement of hollow glass or EPS spheres for constructing
buoyancymodules
 Robust mechanical strength to sustain buoyancy modules as deep as
upto6’000m
 Greaterbuoyantpropertiesduetoitsstructuraldesign
 Alowcost productfromeconomicceramicmaterialsandfabrication
methods
 Highproductqualityconsistency
Left:ceramichollowthin‐walledspheres
Right:buoyancyoftheproducedceramicsphere
PARTNERS
Cerasphere project consortium consists of
partners from United Kingdom, Switzerland
and Norway, including Moulded Foams,
AlmathCruciblesLtd.,PlastoAS,deCavisLtd.,
UK Materials Technology Research Institute
MatRI and Swiss Federal Laboratories for
MaterialsScienceandTechnologyEmpa.
The research leading to these results has
received funding from the European Union's
7th Framework Programme (FP7/‐SME‐
2012‐1) under grant agreement number
606331.
Contact
Jakob Kübler
Empa
Überlandstrasse 129
CH‐8600 Dübendorf
+41 58 765 42 23
[email protected]
www.empa.ch
For further informa on on project and
development, please visit our website.
h p://www.cerasphere.com/ CeraSphere