The NanoSteel Company, Providence, R.I., announces that its Super Hard Steel weld alloy has been selected by Trimay Wear Plate Ltd. as cladding within the steel piping of a concrete slick line to provide wear protection at an underground mine in northern Canada. The alloy has been shown to improve wear rate by a factor of 30 over the previous solution. Combined with Trimay’s unique casing design, this project represents the second line of identical configuration for the customer and will be installed during the first quarter of 2014.
The slick line is a 600 meter vertical borehole system of 9-5/8 in. diameter casing used for delivering concrete to backfill mined out sections and reinforce rock walls so the next ore body segment can be mined safely. It consists of NanoSteel clad API L80 grade steel casing and Trimay’s proprietary threaded joint system.
In its initial installation, thickness loss for the NanoSteel cladding was measured at 0.9 mm (0.035 in.), after delivering 120,000 cubic meters (288,000 metric tons) of concrete over 30 months of service. With this demonstrated wear rate of 320,000 metric tons delivered per millimeter of thickness loss, the coated pipe has provided a 30× improvement over the previous solution—an uncoated API L80 bare casing with a wear rate of 10,500 metric tons per millimeter. Service life for the system is projected to achieve full “life of mine” duration, exceeding 19 years.
“The high hardness and toughness properties provided by our weld overlay result in the improved wear performance for this application,” said Tom Santos, vice president and general manager of coatings. “Because of this, a slick line clad with our material eliminates several replacement cycles for a life of mine solution.”
