Italian steel company Marcegaglia has announced that it has recently hosted the annual meeting of the Technical Group Steel No. 5 of the European Commission, to assess the steel industry projects being financed, mainly by means of the EC’s research fund for coal and steel (RFCS), which has been supporting innovation in the industry since 1952.
According to Marcegaglia, the meeting provided the opportunity for the presentation of the intermediate results of its ACE-PICK demonstration project, launched to industrialize and validate the world's first alternating current (AC) electrolytic pickling process/technology. The process was put into industrial operation at the Marcegaglia plant at Gazoldo degli Ippoliti with positive outcomes over a period of more than 15 months.
The AC electrolytic pickling process is a major breakthrough in treatment lines for flat products, since it can significantly reduce, by up to 50 percent, the treatment times normally required with conventional processes, on both hot and cold rolled products, and makes the use of sandblasters and/or scale-breakers optional and no longer necessary, with obvious benefits for surface quality, especially for products destined for bright annealing. Furthermore, for stainless steels, the process has delivered a significant reduction in environmental impact thanks to the lower specific consumption of reagents such as hydrofluoric and nitric acids.