Erosion model on alumina ceramics: A retrospection, validation and refinement

Erosion due to coal particles has a detrimental effect on economy of power plants. Alumina ceramic-lined pipelines and cyclones are in common use for fluid-laden coal transportation and separation. Several brittle erosion models are available for air-jet and slurry jet erosion in literature. From these, the most-cited erosion models were identified. An orthogonal fractional-factorial experimental matrix which includes all possible variables that contribute to brittle erosion was designed, conducted and validated. This paper gives a comparison between the most-cited literature model and a model developed on the basics of our experimental data. In general, slurry erosion models obtained experimentally were found to have better agreement with literature models when compared to air-jet erosion models. The reason for deviation of experimentally derived models from literature models is systematically studied and rationalized. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.