Best Practices for Managing Abrasive Slurry in Mineral Plants
Abrasive slurry is the lifeblood—and the slow destroyer—of mineral plants. Managed well, it moves more efficiently and keeps the throughput predictable. Managed poorly, it turns pipes, pumps, and instrumentation into wear parts on a short fuse.
The most reliable sites treat slurry as a design input, an operating constraint, and a maintenance priority all at once. Below are practical, field-tested practices that balance reliability, safety, and cost without sacrificing production targets.
Know Your Slurry and Its Wear Behavior
Begin with characterization: particle size distribution, hardness, angularity, and percent solids determine whether wear shows up as polishing abrasion or gouging impact. Check viscosity, pH, and temperature because chemistry and heat alter pump efficiency and liner life.
Build a wear map of high-velocity bends, reducers, and spool pieces; fit ceramic or elastomeric liners where turbulence and impingement peak. Calibrate density meters against grab samples, and revise the wear map whenever ore blend, grind size, or water chemistry changes—slurry that looks the same seldom wears the same.
Engineer the Circuit for Smooth Flow
Design piping to keep velocity above settling yet below erosion thresholds. Select diameters that carry roughly 1.5–3.0 m/s in normal operation, and avoid abrupt area changes that create jets and eddies. Favor long-radius elbows, gradual reducers, and straight runs ahead of meters and pumps.
Right-size pumps for the operating window—not the nameplate maximum—and ensure adequate NPSH to prevent cavitation. Standardize lined components where duty is severe and keep like materials together to avoid galvanic corrosion. Where layout allows, loop circuits to eliminate dead legs and install spools that make the most abused elbows fast to swap.
Operate Consistently and Treat Solids with Respect
Abrasive damage spikes during startups, shutdowns, and surges. Ramp gently, stabilize dilution water and density, and avoid throttling that whips velocity above erosion limits. Use strainers or trash screens upstream of pumps to intercept tramp that can score housings and seize impellers.
Manage sumps with narrow level bands to prevent vortexing and air entrainment, and flush settled pockets on a fixed cadence. Train crews to spot early symptoms—rising amp draw, creeping vibration, drifting setpoints—and to log them against production so root causes can be traced and corrected.
Maintain Proactively and Instrument What Matters
Shift from reactive swaps to condition-based overhauls. Trend ultrasonic thickness on elbows and reducers, infrared temperatures on bearings, and vibration on rotating equipment to catch wear before breakthrough. Standardize spare kits, torque specs, and clearances so rebuilds are quick and repeatable.
In critical service, double-block-and-bleed isolation with positive lockouts shortens safe maintenance windows. Smart placement and selection of valves in mineral plants also reduces leak paths and speeds isolation during hose or liner changes. Close the loop in a CMMS: track wear rates, MTBR, and change-out intervals, then feed that data back into design.
Conclusion
Slurry will always try to wear the plant down, but you can make the contest unfair. Characterize the material, engineer for smooth flow, operate with steady discipline, and maintain on evidence instead of hope. Do that, and the payoffs—higher availability, safer work, and lower cost per ton—arrive together, shift after shift.
