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Electro Nickel Plating vs Electroless Nickel Plating

Our Company is supplying a set of Ball Valves skid mounted for a Gas Plant operating with Sour Natural GAs (6% h2S- 1.35 bara partial pressure).
Our customer is posing the following question as we have proposed valves with ENP ball:
1 They do not accept ENP process for coating and they state that electro nickel plating shall be applied(?)

- As we have investigated with many of our suppliers could you explain if there are any risk for ENP on a ball, NAce base material, and the Sour service (H2S).
- For a such application there are alternatives for ENC, since the Valve manufacture tell us that ENP is practically the only surface treatment available (feasible).
- What do you think which kind of problems has our customer?

Giovanni Gennari
- Italy
2005

We appreciate your carefully written inquiry, Giovanni, but in the end I am sorry to say that it is a little silly. Your customer doesn't want electroless nickel plating to be used, and you haven't found out why; instead, the rest of the world is supposed to guess what your customer's engineer might be afraid of, and to assure you that no matter what scenario he might be imagining, it can't possibly happen?

Good luck with that :-)

Electrolytic nickel is not a proper substitute for electroless nickel. It's a different material and will not deliver equivalent corrosion resistance.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2005