ECI in association with Steuler GmbH, provides a series of Spent Acid Recovery Systems for pickling lines in steel industry. During pickling, acids are used to remove impurities from metal surfaces. The acids become enriched with dissolved metals and gradually lose their chemical activity. The resulting spent acids have to be drained off and neutralized with alkalis to form sludges that are disposed. Neutralization is costly and wasteful because the spent acids still contain high concentrations of free, usable acids that can be recovered for pickling. In order to cater for different pickling conditions, ECI provides different acid regenerating technologies covering resin absorption, membrane filtration and crystallization. Our regeneration process is superior to the conventional roasting regeneration process because our process has a much higher acid recovery percentage and avoids the formation of gaseous pollutants.

Our spent acid recovery systems are extremely cost-effective with a payback of usually less than 3 years.