Finding the way to measure amount of phosphate sludge from pretreatment process
I am assigned to take in charge of phosphating pretreatment production process. And there is one project for me to study. I’ve never got any experience in controlling chemical processes before. But as far as I study the process I acknowledge the long heat up temperature in phosphating tank.
The tank got a lot of sludge precipitation even there is a system design to flow back and forth from 16 m3 settling tank with no circulation, only overflow subtank and 34 m3 production tank with 40 L/min circulation pump and heat exchangers to help keeping the temperature constant.
Luckily the previous technician in charge of this process build a sludge hydraulic press machine. I comes to the solution to use press equipment but only allow to operate on the optimal condition where I need to measure clogged up sludge amounts during the week and set up the routine for this operation.
How do I precisely or at least approximate the sludge amount In tank system? Is there an effect of fresh phosphate chemical and chemical with long time used?
Is there any practical way to represent the rate of sludge phosphate precipitation when comparing on the timescale between newly buildup zinc phosphate chemicals vs long time used (a month or two) of phosphate zinc tank.
If I have only tritrate lab to test for free acid in control range can I use it to reflect anything about its precipitation rate calculated?