Continuous pickling lines
The demands placed on automotive steel are significant. It has to be strong, lightweight, easy to form, and the surface needs to allow the adherence of paint or other coatings. In order for the end product to meet the needs of car makers, effective pickling and descaling is required. Fives has engineered a continuous pickling line for processing third-generation advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) which features:
- Turbulent bath and spray pickling
- Intelligent chemical control providing optimized consumption and waste
- Intuitive operator interface
Continuous pickling line stages
The continuous pickling line is ideally suited to high capacity production lines with continuous operation. Each line is comprised of the following stages:
- Chemical treatment
- Rinsing
- Steering unit, if required
- Dryer units
- Media circulation systems
- Fume collection and treatment solution removal systems
- Monitoring automation system
- Chemical management and storage
Custom engineered and optimized according to customer requirements, Fives’ continuous pickling lines feature a robust, reliable and safe design using advanced materials to ensure minimum chemical consumption and an environmentally responsible operation.
Oxigen-X™, pickling solution for AHSS
Traditional carbon steels contain less than 2% alloys. Millscale was largely made up of iron oxides and could be eliminated with a hot hydrochloric acid pickling solution. However, modern automotive steels contain a higher percentage of alloys and the millscale has a more complex make-up of a combination of oxides, which HCI (hydrochloric acid) alone cannot remove.
Oxigen-X™ is a pickling process designed to cope with the challenges presented by AHSS. It selectively attacks oxides that are particularly resistant to conventional pickling solutions, including:
- Silicon oxide
- Manganese oxide
It reacts with alloy oxides to form alkali metal salts, many of which are water soluble. The remainder can be removed with the HCI pickling solution. Used together, the two pickling solutions can reduce pickling times by more than 50%, creating a significant cost saving.
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