Why stainless steel Thompson channels of a settler rust?
posted in Technical Articles by TecnoConverting
We recently visited a facility and realized that there was corrosion problems on the Thomson channels installed.
It is a common situation and truly is a problem: first aesthetic, because it can be seen perfectly by the user causing bad impression; and it ends up being a malfunction, because the channels begin to deteriorate and eventually have to be changed.
In this particular case the reason for the corrosion was the presence of ferric chloride in the water being processed.
When exists presence of ferric chloride, the use of stainless steel in the installation is not recommended; in this case the best solution would have been a channel made of carbon steel or plastic material.
These cases are very isolated, it´s not usual to find ferric chloride in a settler in a sufficient concentration to deteriorate the equipment in such an aggressive way.
In the case mentioned above, the problem was that the WWTP was treating the water from an Industrial plant that was pouring ferric chloride to the municipal water plant, hence the corrosion of channels.