Project Status: Complete
Project Participants: Alcoa, BHP Billiton, CSIRO, Rio Tinto, AMIRA
Project Leader: Jie Wu (CSIRO)
A major part of the operating and maintenance cost of modern hydrometallurgy and mineral processing plant is attributed to erosion of equipment from slurry and gas particulate flows. Examples of such erosion occur on mill screens, pumps, pipe elbows/tees/manifolds, valves/fittings, orifice plates, tank walls, tank agitators, High Pressure Acid Leach autoclaves, feed pumps, filter internals, heat exchanger ducts/internals and other multiphase flow equipment.
This project provided specific guidelines and generic research information through progress reports on material selection, materials testing, laboratory erosion modelling and fluid flow modelling (both physical and computational fluid dynamics) to reduce equipment erosion and to achieve large maintenance cost savings.
A new concept was developed to improve the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling of erosion. Current models are not material specific, where as the new model incorporates the erosion for specific materials. An electronic “flow erosion library” was developed as a repository of erosion information, including generic case studies. In addition, four confidential one-on-one case studies were conducted for projected sponsors.