Acid Life Extender

PRO-pHx has “only” been proven to work under the manufacturers Application Guidelines.  Hundreds of shops covering electropolishing, electroplating, pickling, passivating, electroless plating, anodizing, galvanizing, heat chemical processes, etc., have filtered their acids successfully with the use of PRO-pHx for years.  If a lab test is set up to approximate shop conditions and to run by these guidelines you should be successful in your assessment.

One test cannot be set up to generically cover all acids, at all concentrations, all temperatures and for all types of metal and organic contaminants.  If a company insists
on testing their (special) bath, here are a few suggestions.

Dissolve the same contaminants (organic and metals) that would be dissolved
into the shop bath.

Dissolve the contaminants regularly into the test unit, as you would in
production baths.

Filter continuously as you would in a production bath.  Adjust your filter micron size up or down to fit the contaminants present (as you would in a production bath). 

Titrate at least once every 2 days for acid strength and add fresh acid back to maintain the test solution at the original concentration (as you would in a production bath).  After making your fresh acid additions, add 1% of that volume in PRO-pHx
to the test solution.

Evaluate your acid for metals and organics contaminants as you do for the production bath.

Your own comments, questions or stories of success and failure are welcome.