Effect of hydrochloric acid on pickling of hot-rolled 304 stainless steel in iron chloride-based electrolytes

Weight loss, corrosion potential and EIS measurements were performed to understand the role of HCl in the pickling of oxidised 304 stainless steel in iron chloride-based electrolytes. The surface finish was analysed with SEM-EDX. The oxidised 304 stainless steel is active on immersion, resulting in a low corrosion potential and a high weight loss. After certain duration the stainless steel either remains active or becomes passive depending on HCl content. At low HCl contents, an ongoing active-to-passive transition results in localised corrosion at pits, grain boundaries and honeycombed recesses. The corrosion potential becomes high and the weight loss is suppressed. The weight loss decreases in the initial stage and rises on extended pickling with adding HCl. Because of anodic brightening, the 304 stainless steel is always active as HCl is concentrated. In contrast with the material that is passivated, the charge transfer resistance is considerably low and the double layer capacitance is large during that brightening.     

Electrolytic pickling of the oxide layer on hot-rolled 304 stainless steel in sodium sulphate

Electrolytic pickling of hot-rolled 304 stainless steel in Na₂SO₄ electrolyte was investigated with electrochemical, weight loss and SEM-EDX measurements. Pickling took place upon both active and transpassive polarisations. Mechanism and kinetics of pickling during active and transpassive polarisations were unravelled. Metallic phase in oxide layer was dissolved during active polarisation while the oxide layer was significantly undercut. Chromium oxide in the oxide layer was oxidised to soluble anions during transpassive polarisation, while iron oxide and metallic phase could either be remained or removed. Pickling due to undercutting with active polarisation was highly pronounced.     

Mechanism of single and multiple step pickling of 304 stainless steel in acid electrolytes

Pickling of oxidised 304 stainless steel in single or multiple electrolytes was investigated based on weight loss and corrosion potential measurements. A smooth surface finish was obtained after an extended pickling in HCl, but some external oxide scales remained. On pickling in HF, the external oxide scales were fully removed, but internal oxide scales remained, and intergranular corrosion took place. Multi-step pickling in successive HCl and HF electrolytes allowed achieving a smooth surface finish free of any oxide scales. The sequence and duration of pickling steps in such multi-step pickling greatly influenced the final surface finish. Corrosion potential of oxidised stainless steel in both electrolytes could differ, and that difference leaded to a uniform pickling of stainless steel in HCl and a localised pickling in HF.     

Composite Texture Synthesis

Many textures require complex models to describe their intricate structures. Their modeling can be simplified if they are considered composites of simpler subtextures. After an initial, unsupervised segmentation of the composite texture into the subtextures, it can be described at two levels. One is a label map texture, which captures the layout of the different subtextures. The other consists of the different subtextures. This scheme has to be refined to also include mutual influences between textures, mainly found near their boundaries. The proposed composite texture model also includes these. The paper describes an improved implementation of this idea. Whereas in a previous implementation subtextures and their interactions were synthesized sequentially, this paper proposes a parallel implementation, which yields results of higher quality.