Slurry erosion of valves for the oil industry

THE PROBLEM
The issue of solid particle erosion in valves used in the petroleum industry has been a primary subject of research by the FluidLab research group since 2015, when the “Erosion Prediction in Control Operation” project was financially supported by ENI S.p.A., one of the leading oil & gas companies worldwide. Main goal of the FluidLab group is to develop methods for estimating the useful lifetime of valves working in heavy-duty slurry conditions, which can be used by engineers for improving the design of the flow control devices and the management of the hydraulic system. The achievement of the goal requires accurately describing the particle motion within the complex valve geometry and, particularly, the particle-wall interactions. Combined with the numerical simulation, the experimental characterization of the erosion behavior of the valve materials by the direct impact test and the wear testing of the actual devices under controlled conditions provides further insight into erosion process and allows the reliability of the predictive models to be assessed.