In the galvanic industry, pickling baths are utilized to clean and remove most oxides from various steel surfaces, as well as to passivate the surface to prevent corrosion.
It is crucial to maintain specific limits for the Fe2+/Fe3+ and free acid/total acid ratios to ensure the chemical bath remains in optimal working condition. The proper composition of the baths directly affects the quality of the final products. By maintaining these parameters within optimal ranges, the quality of the resulting products is improved, and production costs are lowered due to decreased reagent consumption.
This Process Application Note presents a method to regularly monitor the acid and iron composition in pickling baths online to ensure an even cleaning process by using a process analyzer from Metrohm Process Analytics.