Replacement pickling barrels

November 2010 – Before small steel objects can be centrifugally galvanised, they must be chemically treated. The material is loaded into pickling barrels which go through the various steps of the process. As a result, the barrels have a lot of wear and tear to put up with and were recently due for replacement. Following a successful test, Centrizink Wolvega replaced the old stainless steel pickling barrels with synthetic barrels.

The centrizink process comprises a number of stages. When the material arrives, it is loaded into pickling barrels and it goes through a number of treatment stages: the material is first de-greased, then cleaned, pickled and cleaned again, before a layer of flux is applied. The pickling barrels are thus constantly exposed to chemical attack. To prevent chemical damage, the pickling barrels are made from special stainless steel. Unfortunately, it appeared that after several years the welded seams had corroded severely. Hence an alternative was needed. Tests with synthetic pickling barrels showed that they did not get damaged by the de-greasing agent or pickle, so they had a much longer service life. Centrizink Wolvega thus replaced its stainless steel pickling barrels with synthetic ones.