Innopick

Description

The current emissions of acid vapours and the recycling of by-products from the pickling process must follow a controlled protocol ensuring the compliance with environmental regulations. The process can include an in-situ acid and iron regeneration plant (ARP), which implies savings in acid consumption and reuse of the iron, but it also implies huge CO2 generation due to the combustion process required to regenerate the acid. Moreover, pickling is a process using corrosive chemicals, which are insoluble and non-biodegradable and follow strict handling requirements. 

The INNOPICK project aims at a strong modernisation of the pickling process with focus on four innovative actuators: pre-heating of the strip, organic acids use, highly turbulent and abrasive pickling will be developed to reach a sustainable and fast process to remove the scale from carbon steel strips. Strip pre-heating up to 300°C to promote explosive boiling will be investigated before the pickling tanks. This innovation will enable productivity increase estimated up to 10%. Drastic increase of turbulence and the addition of abrasive to the pickling process is a clear innovation turned on productivity increase and expected to be the major advance in carbon strip pickling enabling the substitution of inorganic acid by a substitution by organic acids. 

Further advantages of the use of organic acids are their biodegradability, absence of dangerous classification, low hazard for humans, the fact that they can be produced by electro-reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2), as well as the need of different methods to be regenerated other than combustion, enabling CO2 avoidance.