Nilcra Zirconia has found to provide excellent life cycle performance in areas where maintenance is high and control poor

1. www.morganadvancedmaterials.com
The Role of Advanced Ceramic materials in
Severe Service Pump and Valve Applications
Morgan Advanced Materials

2. Contents
• Overview of Morgan Group
• The driving force for change
• Technical Ceramics Overview
• Valves
• Pumps
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3. Morgan Advanced Materials is a global engineering company
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We apply world-class materials science and manufacturing
expertise to solve the technical challenges that our customers face
everyday.
£1,021.5M
TOTAL GLOBAL SALES

4. The driving force for change – lowering process costs
• Cost of life of equipment
• Increased process up-time
• Increased process efficiency
• Increased safety
• EHS regulations on emissions from leaking valves
• Reduced inventory and handling due to increased life.
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5. What are the solutions to achieve this change?
• Further performance enhancements
from metallic components are
incremental.
• Step changes in material performance
deliver increased life between change-
outs resulting in reduced cost of devices
over their lifetime
• Materials must be sufficiently robust to
survive the application and then to
outperform current valve trim
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6. WIIFM - What's in it for me?
• Equipment manufacturer oftentimes offer products at a
discount to win new projects – then get the returns through
maintenance and spare parts sales. This works well for the
engineering company bidding for the whole project as it
keeps the financing costs down.
• Ceramic is often an aftermarket solution – unless the process
conditions mandate the use of ceramic materials.
• The temptation would be to keep using this strategy – but
many companies now offer ceramic options and end users
are aware of the operational benefits of ceramic – you want
to be competing with the same options as your competitors
and have materials customers want – or better still – beat the
pack.
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7. Technical Ceramics Divison
The Technical Ceramics business of Morgan
Advanced Materials designs and manufactures
advanced ceramic components from a wide range
of ceramic materials
Morgan offer a wide range of advanced ceramic
and glass materials, in-depth materials expertise
and vast applications experience in diverse
markets
Morgan select from an extensive portfolio of
advanced ceramic materials to manufacture
products for a wide range of demanding
applications
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8. Introducing Advanced Ceramic Materials
• Advanced Ceramic Materials are not new with many being
around for over 30 years.
• They are becoming increasingly important in the world of
valves as demands for superior performance and value are
made on plant engineers and reliability engineers
• Materials most suited to valve trim components:
• Zirconia
• Alumina
• Silicon Nitride
• Silicon Carbide
• Coatings will not be discussed today other than to mention
that coated components are only as good as the adhesion of
the coating which can lead to premature failure.

9. Material Properties of Nilcra® Zirconia
• Compared to typical severe service metallic valve
materials such as Stellite, Hastalloy and Chrome Iron
ceramics have:
• Similar strength
• Lower toughness
• Lower resistance to thermal shock
• Higher hardness than any metal alloy
• Much higher corrosion resistance
• Higher application temperatures

10. Material Properties - Toughness
• For valve components such as a valve ball the primary material property is that
of toughness without which the ball will fail catastrophically.
• Toughness in ceramics is “the resistance to crack propagation” meaning the
force required to extend a crack.

11. Material Properties – Toughness measurement
• Many Advanced Ceramic material manufacturers use
short cut measurement techniques to provide the “best
case” toughness data.
• Indentation methods are used to measure toughness
which creates an artificially high value. Double
Cantilever Bend is the only true toughness
measurement.
Indentation
Double Cantilever bend

12. Material Properties - Strength
• Strength is the stress at which a crack will start.
• It is typically stated as Modulus of Rupture and is measured by three or four point bend
strength measurements on test bars.
• A three point bend gives a value that is typically 10% higher than a four point result but is not
as reliable a test for ceramic as a 4 point test stresses a much larger area and is therefore
more likely to find a critical flaw.
• Normal standard deviation statistics cannot be used to model ceramic material MOR data.
Instead the Weibull Modulus is used and the higher the number the higher the reliability of the
strength measurement

13. Reliability versus strength – choose wisely
Material 1 Weibull 30
Material strength 820 MPa
Maximum strength permissible 58%
Design strength = 476 MPa.
Material 2 Weibull 10
Material strength 1000 MPa
Maximum strength permissible 21%
Design strength = 210 MPa
For reliable, consistent performance choose a
material with a high Weibull
Weibull Modulus (m) is a statistical
measurement indicating the
reliability of a brittle material.

14. Material Properties - Corrosion Resistance
Ceramics
have
superior
corrosion
resistance
compared
to metals.

15. Material Properties - Summary
• Toughness similar to cast iron
• Tensile strength similar to mild
steel
• Compressive strength 4x that of
mild steel
• Chemically inert.
• Excellent abrasion resistance
• Excellent corrosion resistance
• Higher application temperatures

16. Advance Ceramics - Zirconia
• There are two main types of zirconia
• Both have similar thermal expansion coefficient and stiffness to
steel
• Mg-PSZ – Magnesia Partially Stabilized Zirconia
• Highest toughness
• Most consistent properties
• Highest thermal shock resistance
• Very well suited to valve disc and ball applications
• Y-TZP – Yttria Tetragonal Zirconia Polycrystal
• Highest strength but half the toughness
• Higher hardness than Mg-PSZ
• Poor resistance to Hydrothermal Degradation (steam)
• Not well suited to valve ball applications

17. Advanced Ceramics – Silicon Nitride
• Various types of this material
• RBSN – Reaction Bonded
Silicon Nitride
• Low strength and toughness
• Not suitable for valve
components
• GPPSN – Gas Pressure
Sintered Silicon Nitride, SiAlON
is very similar
• This grade used for valve
components
• High hardness
• Good strength
• Moderate toughness
• Excellent thermal shock and
thermal stability

18. Silicon Carbide
• These are highest hardness
materials but with much lower
toughness
• Not suitable for components
that are subject to high
stresses such as valve balls or
discs or where severe
vibration in the line is present.
• Extreme care must be taken
with handling and assembly.
• More suitable for static
components such as valve
liners and seats.

19. www.morganadvancedmaterials.com
Valves

20. Applications -Valve Balls and Seats
• By definition these are “hard” seated
valves
• High class of seal (gas tight) can be
achieved by match lapping
• Zirconia, Silicon Nitride and Alumina are
suitable depending on thermal and
corrosion conditions
• Valve seats
are often
shrink fitted
into metal
housings.
• The high
thermal
expansion of
zirconia suits
this process.

21. Oil Sands – case study
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Fisher Emerson V500 valves – up to 12” size

22. Oil sands
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23. Oil Sands
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24. Bauxite Refinery application
• Major global alumina manufacturer
• Big problems with wear life of chrome iron valves in caustic slurry with valves
needing to be replaced before scheduled maintenance
• Commenced with valve seat. Designed using a shrink fitting arrangement to place
the ceramic only where it is needed to reduce costs
• This worked well outlasting chrome iron by 4 times
• Gradually worked through the entire valve conversion to ceramic
• Valve plug
• Plug shaft sleeve
• Liners
• These valves are control and shutoff. Fully ceramic lined they now improve control of
process to higher levels reducing variability in the refining process.
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25. Mineral digestion shut off valve
• Valve patented in 2015
• Slurry in 30% HCl at 170°C
• Hastelloy lasts 2 days
• Morgan Z-max valve not yet worn out
after 1 year
• Design of ball valve solely that of Morgan
Technical Ceramics
• All wetted areas Nilcra® Zirconia
• Initial design had issues with external
environment causing corrosion of
stainless steel valve body
• Introduced a Telflon® coating inside and
out to prevent this
• Added flange plates to enable better
sealing of gaskets
• This is now the only valve working in this
application.
• This valve is constructed and certified by
our Chinese partner and uses Nilcra®
Zirconia valve trim made in Melbourne,
Australia.
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26. www.morganadvancedmaterials.com
Pumps

27. Pumps
• Our target market is “oil and gas” where Booster and Main Oil Pumps
pump crude oil as a mixture of oil, water and sand. With over 25 years
history over a large number of pumps, different end user customers
experience Morgan's’ Nilcra® Zirconia solution offers reliability and tried
and proven confidence.
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28. Pumps
• Nilcra® Zirconia pump wear components - standard material or “Long life”
option? This will create a point of differentiation over competition from low
cost manufacturers and an attractive option for downtime reduction or
energy efficiency sensitive customers.
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29. Pumps
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Invest in life cycle saving

30. Life Cycle Focus
• True value is achieved with the lowest life cycle cost – the
above example didn’t include downtime costs.
• Ceramic design – our expertise is in creating cost effective
parts not just copied from metal designs…but parts designed
utilising our ceramic and application knowledge.
• We partner with our customers to solve wear problems –
designing to maximise performance at minimal assembly cost
(which may be modifying mating parts rather than tightening ceramic tolerances)

31. MTC Melbourne
Applications For Wear and Corrosion
Resistance
In Centrifugal Pumps operating in high
sand environments

32. Esso
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33. MTC Melbourne
Refurbished 8 stage
centrifugal pump fitted
with Nilcra® Zirconia
wear rings and shaft
bushing.
Original wear rings were
from 420 SS 270-300
BHH & 420 SS 350-
400 BHH and lasted
12-15 months in a
sandy well service
before requiring a total
overhaul.

34. MTC Melbourne
• Same impeller shaft more
than 4 years later.
• Note the wear on the
impellers and the lack of
wear on the Nilcra Zirconia
wear rings.
• The Nilcra Zirconia wear
rings has extended the
operating life of the pump by
approximately 4 times.
• As a consequence of the
reduced wear, the pump
efficiency remains higher for
longer.

35. MTC Melbourne
Impeller
with wear
rings fitted

36. MTC Melbourne
Wear ring and
shaft throat bush
fitted

37. Recent Vertical Pump retrofit
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38. Recent retrofit
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Very accurate
concentricity
requirements as
well as dimensional
tolerancing

39. Case Study – Shaft sleeves
Application: Centrifugal pump
Environment: Pumping ammonium carbonate slurry
Temperature range between 45°C and
85°C
Shaft speed 1500 RPM
Water lubricated
Material replaced: Steel
Problem:
Previous materials used: Steel sleeve - life of 5 weeks
Ceramic coating - life of 8-10 weeks
Maintenance costs and production down time substantial
Nilcra® Zirconia Solution:
TS grade Nilcra® Zirconia shaft sleeves incorporating
slightly modified design to prevent thermal stress
gradients caused by frictional heat build up during periods
of insufficient lubrication.
Performance benefits:
Nilcra® Zirconia shaft sleeves lasted 12 months in Nickel
refinery

40. Nilcra Zirconia wear ring versus Bronze
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Application: Water – Bore Pump
• Objective was to compare wear rate and pump efficiency
• Run time: 9308 hours
• Ceramic Wear 0.08mm versus Bronze at 0.74mm
Conclusion
“The ceramic wear rings are at least initially practical and durable. The wear rate
is a magnitude lower than bronze enabling the efficiency to be maintained over the
pump lifetime”

41. Features and Benefits Summary
• Worlds Toughest Ceramic! Sufficient toughness and strength to
“survive” many valve applications including on site maintenance and
repair.
• Hardness and corrosion resistance achieves extended valve
component life
• Thermal expansion similar to steel; simplifies fabrication and
maximizes design parameters
• Adds value by reducing the total lifetime cost of the valve through
increased component life

42. FDA Approval
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43. ISO 9001 Certification
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