Pickling is a metal surface treatment used in the stainless steel industry to remove impurities from steel and obtain optimal services. Every hour, approximately 300,000 litres of acid are used in pickling, resulting in huge quantities of waste acid.

Alongside the damaging environmental impact, steel pickling works suffer from high operational costs to manage the disposal or regeneration of said acid. SUSTEC has developed the REGMAX system, a new acid regeneration process to provide a sustainable low-cost solution to this problem. The REGMAX system increases acid regeneration rate to over 97% and reduces operational costs by up to 91%. Within the overall project, SUSTEC intends to scale-up regeneration capacity; and commission a pilot plant for a large scale demonstration and validation of the technology in industrial conditions.