Laboratory-Scale Simulation of Acid Pickling of Steel Sheets with an Instrument Modeling the Production Line

Abstract

A fully automated laboratory-scale workstation has been constructed for simulating industrial acid pickling processes of steel sheet products. The device built comprises 4 liquid tanks that can be heated up to 80 °C and an arbitrary immersion program can be performed with the sheets to be tested by varying the immersion time and the motion velocity in each tank. The weight loss has been measured for both hot-rolled and cold-rolled specimens as a function of all variable parameters. The weight loss associated with the removal of the oxide layer could be established. The average oxide-related loss was 58 g⋅m-2 and 2 g⋅m-2 for hot-rolled and cold-rolled samples, respectively. It was found that the immersion time is the decisive parameter in the weigh loss measured, while the motion velocity and the temperature of the sample treatment are of secondary importance.