The Benefits of Combining Chrome White Iron and Steel

Wear Life and Piping Codes

Transporting abrasive material under pressure can cause unplanned downtime and added expense to any operation. Wear-life can be severely impacted if the wrong material is used to combat abrasion. To complicate operations, a piping code may need to be adhered to, which presents a challenge to many of the traditional materials used to protect against erosion. Not all components are easily installed, which can also increase downtime and expense.

Solution

A combination of high chrome white iron and steel is often the perfect solution when meeting piping codes in an abrasive, high pressure application.

1. Steel has predictable mechanical properties. This allows engineers to design a component that acts as a pressure boundary.
2. Millwrights and other maintenance personnel can treat the steel boundary with familiar procedures like welding or drilling/tapping.
3. High chrome white iron provides superior resistance due to its combination of martensite and carbides in its microstructure.
4. Pipe components created by combining high chrome white iron and steel, therefore, save downtime and money.

Read: To learn more about why chrome white iron is so abrasion resistant, read this.

Downtime

Chrome white iron can offer superior wear resistance compared to chromium carbide overlay, or rubber depending on the application. This decreases the number of change outs and subsequent downtime. Consider, for example, that changing out a spool can often involve disassembling part of the plant, costing at least 2 days in downtime (disassembly and reassembly). By reducing change outs from every 6 months to once every 2 years, companies can recognize significant cost savings.

Safety

Reducing the number of change outs or repairs also cuts employee risk. For example, when weld repairing chromium carbide overlay, employees are often working at height and/or in a confined space.

Time

Writing procedure plans and getting the necessary permits to complete repairs and change outs can take 2 days. Increasing wear life and performance of an application can save the maintenance and engineering department time and money.

Key Takeaway

Combining the abrasion resistance of high chrome white iron, with the predictable mechanical properties of steel, can offer downtime, safety and cost advantages. This is particularly true of pipe applications.

Resource: To learn more about chrome white iron, check out our chrome white iron webpage.