INVESTIGATION OF SLURRY EROSION IN PIPELINE MATERIAL

Erosion wear is very serious problem in slurry pipelines specifically in thermal power plants.Wear of the pipelines results in the loss of capital money due to failure and frequentreplacement of pipelines. According to FAU-2012, 88 thermal power plants in India withinstalled capacity of 80458MW, consume 407.61 million tone of the coal (lignite based)every year. Huge amount of bottom ash is produced every year in these thermal power plants andthis is transported to ash ponds mainly through mild steel piping system. Literature survey ofvarious researchers shows the high erosion wear of mild steel pipeline material with bottom ashslurry. In the view of above, author is motivated to study erosion wear behavior of the differentgeneral purpose materials and the coatings. Erosion wear of WC-12Co coated and uncoated, SS304 materials is the evaluated by using slurry pot tester with bottom ash slurry. High velocityoxy-fuel process is used for the coating. Erosion wear at four different speeds 500rpm, 800rpm,1100 rpm and 1200 rpm is evaluated at 25% and 45% slurry concentrations with 90 min and180 min experimental study. Erosion wear increases with the increase in the slurryconcentration and speed, it is noticed that at low speeds (500rpm to 800rpm) rate of erosionwear is more as compared to higher speeds (1100 rpm to 1200 rpm). The speed exponent andconcentration exponent are also calculated and are in a good agreement with previous researchworks, experimental results are also investigated so as to evaluate the influence of speed,concentration and time parameters on the erosion wear of the materials and it is found thatinfluence (percentage) of speed is more on erosion wear and is followed by time andconcentration parameters.