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Wire drawing without HCl acid pickling

June 26, 2011

Sir, we are in the process of drawing fine wire. We use 1 mm binding wire which will be pickled in HCl and dipped in lime and dried. This will be fed to wet drawing machine which consists of 13 tc dies, and final wire is of .34 mm fine wire.Now our problem is using HCl for pickling, because of environmental problems we could not use HCl. Please suggest any other cheaper method of descaling the wire, which should not be affected to my first die and final finishing.

Murthy Prahallad
Industrialist - Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

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June 27, 2011

Hi, Murthy. Can you give a little more detail about what you mean by "because of environmental problems we could not use HCl"? Maybe you actually mean that there are some safety issues within the plant? Because HCl, after simple neutralization, becomes hydrogen gas and salt water, which covers the majority of the planet to a depth of a couple of miles :-)

TPlus, HCl is produced as a free byproduct of organic processes which would otherwise have to release it as a waste product. It's pretty hard for me to imagine any industrial process with a lower environmental impact or smaller footprint than properly managed HCl. Please tell me what I'm missing. Thanks.

Regards,

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