Assessment of the erosion resistance of steels used for slurry handling and transport in mineral processing applications

The wear environment of steels used for containing, transporting and processing erosive mineral slurries is often such that fluid borne particles form a layer moving at high speed across the wearing surface. Information on the performance ranking of such materials is limited, particularly with respect to the influence of steel hardness and microstructure on the resistance to erosion. This is particularly important for the oil sands industry of Northern Alberta where handling and processing of essentially silica-based solids results in extremely severe wear conditions. This paper presents slurry erosion data obtained on 11 commercially available wear resistant plate and pipeline steels with hardness values up to ∼750 HV. These data were obtained using a Coriolis erosion tester operated at 5000 rpm with an aqueous slurry containing 10 wt.% of 200–300 μm silica sand particles.