Department of Science and Technology (DST) awarded a research project titled “Synthesis and Characterization of Ceramic Layered Steel Tube Using Centrifuge Thermite Process for High-Temperature Applications” under SERB SURE scheme. The Principal Investigator (PI) for the project is Dr. N. Radhika, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore and Co-Investigators are Dr. M. Ramu, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore and Dr. M. Sathiskumar, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Chennai.
Project Summary
Steel tubes used in high pressure applications or places where it undergoes corrosion and abrasion poses increased need for maintenance and repair due to reduced life span. This put forward the need of a novel method of providing inner lined coating. The method of thermal spray coatings was introduced to reduce the complexity of process but highly complicated specialized trouble in creating internal coating of tubes/pipes with wide range of diameters and stringent process control makes these cycles to be improper to be utilized. These techniques tend to be of time consuming and the coatings so produced are of low quality, corrosion reduces the mechanical qualities of the materials. Consequently, it is important to improve or supplant the on-going coating techniques with a process which is both technically and economically feasible and is able to produce coatings of improved thickness and the coating so produced must be compatible for high temperature and corrosive atmospheric application. The present proposal suggests the use of ceramics as the coating and centrifugal thermite process for the production of ceramic lined steel tube. The proposed method tends to provide thicker coating of desired composition uniformly throughout the tube with minimal energy input. The coating produced by centrifugal self-propagating high-temperature synthesis will be devoid of any impurities as high temperatures remove any volatile contaminants that have been adsorbed or are present in the reactants. Thicker ceramic lining can be produced through this process which is impossible by other techniques. The reaction is self-sustaining as the energy required for synthesis is provided primarily by the heat of chemical reactions.; hence the energy input is minimal and needs to be provided for initiating the reaction. Technology transfer of the proposed concept of inner ceramic layer coated steel tube can be made to any suitable industry manufacturing steel tubes for mass production.
