Power Pretreatment Process

Pretreatment Plant

Pretreatment is absolutely necessary for any Biodiesel Plant wishing to incorporate crude degummed oils, waste vegetable oil (WVO), jatropha, palm, beef tallow, choice white grease, poultry fat, and various other inferior oils other than RBD . All of these oils come with 2%-15% FFA and will consume large amounts of methylate and methanol which produce water and soaps that contaminate, centrifuges, piping, pumps, and vessels on any future batches.

Preliminary cleaning or degreasing involves the removal of heavy oils, greases and soils, and is necessary before a component can be pickled or bright dipped for the removal of oxide and scale. After the pickling step there may be some residual oil remaining on the substrate. This can occur even though the scale or rust was clean and ostensibly water-break free. If a contamination free substrate is needed, the pickle step should be followed by a water rinse, an alkaline cleaning step and an additional rinse.

Pretreatment Process

After this the component is ready for polishing or other mechanical finishing. Even where an article is not mechanically finished prior to plating, it is still good practice to carry out initial degreasing and pickling before components pass to the primary cleaning stages.

These stages will remove all traces of grease and any passive film to give an active surface to which the electroplated deposit will adhere.

The pre-treatment processes immediately prior to plating generally take the form of hot alkali cleaning, possibly followed by acid dipping to remove slight oxide films, then final cleaning to ensure that the component is perfectly clean. Where the final cleaning is carried out in an alkaline solution and the components are to be plated from an acid solution such as nickel, they are given a dip through dilute acid followed by water rinsing before they are placed in the plating tank.