Tungum Limited

General information

Tungum tube, our original product, was launched in the early 1930’s as a decorative alloy and it was soon appreciated as an excellent copper-based engineering alloy. From prior to World War II, right up to today it is a favoured material for many applications such as military aircraft, ships, ferries, dredgers and many other applications.

The use of Tungum in the oil and gas industry didn’t start until the early 1970’s when American technology on offshore operations combined with British process industry knowledge to form the UK’s design base for rigs and platforms. Both sources believed in using stainless steel tubing – the Americans because it was traditional in their industry – the British because stainless steels are the generally accepted materials in the process industry.

Efforts to have Tungum tube installed in major hydraulic and pneumatic circuits (as distinct from process instrumentation lines) met with some opposition due to material standardisation on the platform. Operators and designers were increasingly concerned by the ever-growing cases of pitting and crevice corrosion taking place in stainless steel tubing lines. Tungum is not affected by pitting and crevice corrosion and started to be introduced to non-process hydraulic & pneumatic systems.

Another notable event occurred during the early 70s when for safety reasons, Lloyds specified Tungum for use in oxygen lines on dive / hyperbaric systems. Almost overnight, dive equipment manufacturers converted from stainless steel to Tungum on all dive system circuits e.g. oxygen, air, heliox, heating water and hydraulics. Tungum is ideal for these applications as it is non-sparking and has the benefit of clean bore characteristics. Tungum Tube was also being preferentially used by major crane manufacturers such as Priestman, Clarke-Chapman, Stothert and Pitt for pedestal frame hydraulics and other hydraulically actuated auxiliaries due to its excellent corrosion resistance.

The maintenance-free performance of these Tungum installations was being noticed by operators around the world who were by now being faced with costly replacements of stainless steel due to pitting and crevice corrosion. This type of corrosion was occurring after as little as two years of an intended 25+ years of installation life. Now Tungum is approved and used by BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, KBR and AMEC to name but a few.