Questions You Should Know about ceramic lined hose

Why Your Ceramic Lined Steel Piping Is Failing And How To Fix It

When rubber lined steel piping isn’t lasting long enough, maintenance teams often turn to ceramic lined steel pipe as an alternative.

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The thought process makes sense. Ceramic tiles provide better sliding abrasion resistance compared to rubber, leading to an expectation of longer wear life.

However, in practice, this solution often fails to meet expectations. This article explores why that happens and offers practical examples of how mining engineers have resolved the issue.

Causes of Ceramic Tile Failure

We've seen numerous cases of failed ceramic lined steel spools in our customers' facilities. Usually, the primary issue is dislodged and debonded tiles.

Typically, the remaining tiles still have plenty of wear life left, but they don't stay bonded to the pipe. Once tiles start dislodging from one spot, spool failure is imminent.

When the first tile lifts and peels away, the slurry erodes the remaining grout and begins to work its way under the neighboring tiles. This process can cause large sections of tiles to peel away, exposing the bare steel and leading to pipe failure.

Dislodged tiles leave hard edges that create turbulence, leading to further downstream issues. Dislodged tiles can also get stuck in equipment like cyclones and pumps.

We recently received a photo from a site showing these exact issues. Slurry had ripped entire tile sections away, leaving the grout and steel pipe exposed.

Why Does Ceramic Lined Steel Pipe Fail Like This?

In our experience, two main reasons contribute to the failure of ceramic lined steel:

1. How it is manufactured
2. Rigid steel pipe combined with rigid ceramic tiles cannot absorb impact and vibration

The Manufacturing Process & Consistency

Manufacturing ceramic-lined steel spools is a labor-intensive, manual process. As a result, the quality of gluing and grouting can vary significantly. The tiles are glued individually or in strips, creating ridges that can chip or peel the tile, offering the slurry an opening to get underneath.

In one example, a tile had already dislodged, and the grout around it was being eroded, indicating that more tiles would soon follow.

Slurry Impact and Absorption

Ceramic tiles offer excellent wear resistance but are poor at absorbing impact. This is compounded by the rigidity of steel pipes. When slurry hits the pipe walls, particularly during changes in fluid direction, tight bends, or turbulence, over time, hot spots develop that take the brunt of the impact. Vibration around pumps can also exacerbate issues with the rigid combination of ceramic tiles and steel piping.

How Other Sites Have Solved the Problem

Our customers get better results using ceramic lined rubber mining hose in highly abrasive, turbulent areas of the processing plant.

The biggest improvements in wear life come from using HESPER Slurryflex CLX ceramic lined mining hose in areas such as:

• Mill discharge lines
• Pipework connecting to slurry pumps
• Cyclone feeds
• Cyclone overflows and underflows
• Gravity circuits
• High impact bends (where high velocity slurry is rapidly changing direction)

The effectiveness of the Slurryflex CLX lies in its ability to address all shortcomings of ceramic lined steel pipe. It uses small hexagonal fine grain alumina ceramic tiles embedded into the rubber lining of the hose. Hot vulcanization securely bonds the ceramic tiles to the hose, creating a seamless surface.

We've perfected this over years with a proprietary manufacturing process. With thousands of these hoses in use in severe slurry conditions globally, we have never seen a tile debond.

Using a rubber hose instead of steel pipe also deals with the ceramic’s other weakness: impact absorption. Sites trialing different pipelining options always find that ceramic lined mining hose absorbs and dissipates particle impact better than rigid pipe.

Where slurry changes direction or becomes turbulent, the mining hose's carcass offers extra resilience, allowing particles to rebound off the tile, reducing wear and extending piping life.

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Rubber mining hoses are also easier to handle and install compared to steel pipes, owing to their flexibility.

Results from Other Mine Sites

We've helped many maintenance teams reduce downtime and increase wear life by switching to Slurryflex CLX. Here are some examples:

Kansanshi Copper-Gold Mine: 5x Wear Life on Fast Wearing Slurry Lines

The ceramic lined steel on their high-wear slurry lines was failing within nine months. The downtime and lost production from replacing the DN600 pipe were frustrating and costly. They trialed Slurryflex CLX against ceramic lined steel, resulting in a fivefold improvement in wear life.

FMG Solomon Iron Ore Mine: 8x Longer Lifespan on Cyclone Overflow Piping

The maintenance team at FMG Solomon was initially replacing their cyclone overflow piping every 10 to 12 months, despite switching from rubber-lined to ceramic lined steel. The ceramic lined mining hose has extended this lifespan by 8 times.

Argyle Diamond Mine: 12x Improvement on De-Grit Line Piping

At Argyle Diamond Mine, the maintenance team spent countless man-hours fixing leaking and fast-wearing ceramic-lined steel on their de-grit line. Switching to Slurryflex CLX solved the problem, offering a tenfold increase in wear life.

Newcrest’s Cadia Mine: 2+ Year Lifespan on Slurry Pump Spool

The reliability team at Cadia Mine eliminated a long-term maintenance issue by replacing their slurry pump spools with Slurryflex CLX. It has already outperformed the ceramic-lined steel spools.

Mt Pleasant Mine: 6x Wear Life with Pump Reducer

Slurry pump piping caused significant operational issues at Mt Pleasant Mine. The tailings pumps' ceramic-lined steel spools lasted only three months. They now achieve 6x longer wear life using ceramic-lined mining hose.

Want to Fix Problem Piping in Your Plant?

Reliability teams working with Slurryflex CLX experience better plant performance with more uptime and throughput. They found that while ceramic liners offer extra wear resistance, ceramic-lined steel has its drawbacks.

Ceramic lined mining hose provides the best of both worlds: wear resistance and flexibility to handle turbulent and highly abrasive slurry applications.

A Guide to Ceramic Coated Elbows

Ceramic coating is a thin protective layer that lines or wraps around pneumatic conveying elbows, pipes, or tubes in your system. It enhances the durability and reliability of pneumatic systems by minimizing wear and tear on components, which reduces downtime and optimizes productivity.

Components like elbows in a pneumatic conveying system require additional protection. Ceramic coated elbows are subjected to both impact and abrasive wear as the material changes direction inside these elbows. Even at a constant airspeed, the conveyed material's speed isn't perfectly consistent. Variations in tube sizes or directional changes affect airspeed and pressure, causing turbulence that can damage system components.

Such transition issues can result in increased abrasive friction, especially in elbows. However, ceramic coating significantly minimizes extensive abrasion.

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