CFD Simulation and Experimental Results Validation of Slurry Erosion Wear using Slurry Pot Test Rig

Abstract

Erosion wear is a severe issue in different industrial applications results in economic costs and operational failure. In most of the industry pipelines are used to handle the slurry during industrial process, the slurry handling pipeline is failure due to erosion wear. The slurry pot test rig is developed and fabricated for investigating the erosion wear rate of different material and solid particles used in the slurry pipeline with various working conditions. The various influencing parameters such as solid particle flow velocity, impact angle, solid particle size, and concentration are responsible for the rate of material loss and erosion wear mechanisms. The present study is based on experimental work and its validation of results of slurry erosion wear for slurry handling pipeline using slurry pot test rig and CFD simulation. For experimentation, mild steel is used as pipeline material and coal bottom ash is used as solid particles for simulating slurry handling pipeline use in a thermal power plant. The experimentation is performed on the slurry pot test rig. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool is used to predict and simulate the experimental results of the slurry pot test rig. The simulation results compared with experimental results and check the percentage of errors with both the results. The simulation results show a similar kind of trend for erosion wear behavior of mild steel as per the experimental results. Simulation results show the average error up to ± 21% variation with the experimental result. The simulation results give the position of erosion wear over the sample surface.
 HIGHLIGHTS
 
 Erosion wear is the major problem in slurry handling industries (thermal power plant, chemical industries, hyro-power plants, coal minis) and components (Pipelines, Centrifugal pumps, flow control valve, turbines etc.)
 Experimental worked conducted to find the erosion wear rate and material removal mechanism of pipeline material (MS) with simulating thermal power plant conditions. Similarly software simulation analysis performed for same conditions
 The experimental results give the exact value of erosion wear rate but it does not show the position of maximum wear over the sample surface. Therefore, the experimental results are used for finding the erosion wear rate i.e. value of the sample and simulation results are used for finding the position of maximum erosion wear over the target sample
 
 GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT