Pickling and Passivation

If you’re looking to get some gloss back on any of your stainless steel parts, you’ve come to right place. Haygor can help you with this by performing either pickling or acid passivation of the stainless steel. These methods are often used in tandem to on equipment to get rid of contaminates and oxidation and also improve the corrosion resistance, which can extend the life and value of your components. However even though these processes are used together, they’re quite different.

What is the Difference Between Metal Pickling and Passivation?

Pickling is the process of chemically removing a single layer of metal to restore a steel object’s stainless properties after welding or other manufacturing processes. Pickling uses more aggressive acids than passivation. The chemicals used for the Pickling of stainless steel can dissolving oxidation, weld oxides and scale and can etch the base material. This process works best for materials that are welded, cast, heat-treated or have existing oxides.

Meanwhile, passivation is a separate process to pickling. It’s the process of acid cleaning which helps to form the chromium oxide layer that is responsible for the steel’s corrosion resistance and can be done separately from pickling or part of the pickling process. It’s a more subtle process, as passivation chemicals aren’t aggressive enough to dissolved surface oxides, which is what happens during the pickling process. Newly machined tend to be passivized.

Pickling and Passivation Companies

Whether you decide your stainless steel needs pickling or passivation—or perhaps both, Haygor can help. We clean all types of fittings, manifold, transmitters, gauges, and hoses and have serviced the Petrochemical Industry for more than three decades. Our technicians and managers have more than 50 years of experience and knowledge in a variety of industrial instruments and will make sure you have peace of mind knowing your components are being properly taken care of.

Our services range from repair, calibration and certification of a wide variety of instrument types, sales of remanufactured instruments, and cleaning for critical (oxygen, chlorine or other) service.  We use state-of-the-art calibration equipment and packaging equipment.  Our exclusive powder coating process provides a durable, as well as attractive finish on the instruments we remanufacture.

The important thing to remember is Haygor knows this industry inside and out. And we will make it our mission to have your stainless steel look 100% better when you leave with it than when you brought it to us. Your materials are important to you; your satisfaction is important to us.