At Scanacon we accepted the challenge from producers of steel, titanium, and zirconium to help them eliminate environmentally unfriendly waste from their processes. The aim was to reduce environmental impact to close to zero and boost profitability for steel plants.
Pickling, necessary but problematic
At Scanacon with our 40-year history in acid pickling chemistry, we have a deep understanding of the problems associated with your pickling operations. Pickling is an expensive, non-core activity, a necessary production step that is messy and difficult to control from a process perspective. It also involves Health and Safety risks. Although acids used in the process can be recovered to meet environmental legislation, the regulations and demands from authorities are getting tougher every day. The most challenging aspect is that pickling processes generate massive volumes of waste acid and neutralization sludge with a non-recovered valuable metal content.
Customers ask us, how can we...
- Reduce the large volumes of sludge that are generated?
- Recover the high value metals such as chrome and nickel?
- Clean and neutralize the contaminated water for release back to nature?
- Eliminate the heavy use of lime?
The overriding question is how can we minimize environmental impact and at the same time boost profitability?
The answer is… the Scanacon way!
By recycling valuable metals, acids and water used in the surface treatment process, thus keeping generation of hazardous waste close to zero and minimizing the plant’s environmental impact. Costs related to the handling of sludge are virtually eliminated and profitability increases dramatically.
