Product Sheet: Pickling/Chemical Cleaning

Allegheny Surface Technology offers in-house and on-site pickling/passivation services. They can pickle passivate inside or outside a tank, depending on the size of your product. Pickling is the removal of oxide layers resulting from welding and heat-treating.

Pickling is the chemical cleaning of metallic surfaces in order to remove impurities, stains or scale with an acidic solution. Allegheny Surface Technology uses pickling solutions consisting of nitric (HNO3) and hydrofluoric (HF) acids to remove the scale and underlying chromium depleted layers to restore the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Mechanical removal of those imperfections may leave abrasive material or other particles embedded in the surface and in some applications mechanical polishing may be impractical.