Investigation of Erosion Wear of Slurry Pump Material

Abstract

Over the last few decades there has been a phenomenal growth in the demand of raw materials. This rise in demand has led to drastic changes in the existing techniques of mining, food processing, power generation and other sectors where transportation of suspended solids play a major role. Due to this change, there has been an increase in requirements in slurry transportation. Material loss due to erosion wear is a serious problem associated with flow of solid-liquid mixtures. Slurry erosion limits the useful life of equipment and there efficiency. Erosion is therefore a critical parameter for design, selection and operation of the hydraulic transportation system. Engineering interest is to estimate the service life of equipment / components subjected to slurry erosion and to investigate the possibilities of enhancement of their life. As per the application different materials are used. In the present work evaluation of erosion wear for centrifugal slurry pump is done experimentally as well as numerically. Depending upon applications different materials are selected which are used in centrifugal slurry pumps. The materials selected for present study for centrifugal slurry pump are stainless steel 316 and stainless steel 420. The slurry pot tester is used to evaluate the erosion wear by ash with water solid liquid mixture. Ash required for testing purpose was collected from Guru Govind Singh thermal power plant, Ropar, Punjab. Maximum particle size of solids is 2000 . Effect of concentration and flow rate of slurry at different speeds is evaluated. . It is experimentally observed that erosion wear is a function of velocity of slurry. As velocity increases erosion wear rate proportionally increses. For numerical simulation ANSYS CFX 13.0 used for evaluation of erosion wear at different concentrations, mass flow rate and speeds.