Deposits, rust and oxide scale may form on the surface of equipment items during fabrication and operation, and may lead to e.g. contamination of the process fluid, process disruptions or increased susceptibility to corrosion.

Often, chemical industrial cleaning (i.e. cleaning with the aid of chemicals) can be an effective technique to remove these products and to optimize the surface properties of metals in terms of corrosion resistance. In particular, chemical cleaning should be considered when persistent deposits are present in locations that are difficult to access and when corrosion resistance needs to be restored after fabrication. However, the final choice of a chemical cleaning technique depends on a variety of aspects like the desired result and effectiveness, safety aspects and corrosion aspects both during and after cleaning.

This article focuses on a number of aspects of chemical cleaning of stainless steel equipment operating in aqueous environments. The introduction discusses the most common deposits in aqueous environments, the reasons why and the techniques by which they may be removed.

To get a deeper understanding of the best chemical cleaning procedure for removing waterside deposits from stainless steel equipment, an experimental research program is being carried out of which the results will be presented at the conference.