Erosion wear on centrifugal pump casing due to slurry flow

Erosion wear is recognized as an engineering problem in slurry handling and transportation equipment such as centrifugal pumps, which are widely used in numerous industries for this purpose. The present work shows erosion damage predictions in lime slurry pumps in a process industry, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), Khewra, District Jhelum, Pakistan. Three-dimensional numerical analysis has been conducted for the prediction of erosion and its effect on the head and efficiency losses for lime slurry flow through centrifugal pumps. The tongue and belly portions of the volute casing are found to be the most affected regions of erosion damage. It has been found that erosion loss increases with impact velocity, concentration by weight, and diameter of the solid particles. The effect of temperature seems to be critical for erosion damage as it enhances the phenomenon of corrosion-erosion. The simulation results are compared and validated against both data provided by ICI and published experimental data. The results are found to be in good agreement.