Bi Metallic Wye and Lateral Hydrotransport Spool Update

The Wyes and Laterals were recently inspected after twelve months operation.  (Read about the Bi Metallic Wye and Lateral installation here)

During a recent outage we were able to record how the castings stood up to a year of service.  The media being pumped was hot water, bitumen, quartz/feldspar sand mixture with 5” minus rocks.

Wear on the switching wye leg and the downstream leg was negligible, the only recorded wear was in the 5-7 o’clock position at the bottom of the upstream spool.

The customer was very pleased with the finding and as a result has not scheduled another inspection for a year.

These spools are used in Hydrotransport of bitumen and ore, similar CCO (chromium carbide overlay) spools are used downstream in tailings. Typically the CCO will require weld repair after six-week service, if no weld repair takes place the spool will often wear through the pipe after nine weeks.

The customer has seen a dramatic increase in wear life and decreased cost of maintenance and lost production.

As the result the customer is looking for other application to utilize white iron in their facility.