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Posted By Zaclon
January 24, 2022 Category: General

Zaclon has been a manufacturer of potassium silicate for nearly fifty years. Today, we want to talk to you about one of the unique products: Zacsil.  What Is Zacsil?  Zaclon offers several grades of potassium silicates under the Zacsil® brand name. Zacsils are solutions of a soluble glass that we dissolve in water. They come in a variety of forms and concentrations.  Depending on your application, silica and potassium oxide ratios will vary.  How Is Zacsil Utilized?  Zacsil Potassium Silicate has many applications, including welding rods, detergents, cleaners, sulfuric acid catalyst binders, paints, masonry, wood, metal coatings, and acid-resistant cement, the above-mentioned electronic applications.  As well as drilling fluid formulations, Zacsil potassium silicates are used in cementing applications, manufacturing catalysts, and pharmaceutical applications.  Discover More About Zacsil  Learn more by connecting with us today by clicking here for more information on how Zacsil can

Posted By Zaclon
December 27, 2021 Category: Zaclon, Galvanized Testing, Galvanized Products

If you have any products that have been galvanized, then you might also know it's best to test them out every so

Posted By Manny Detres
December 23, 2021 Category: General

If you’re considering growing plants without using soil, hydroponics is the way to go!  What Is Hydroponics?  In hydroponics, plants are grown without soil using mineral nutrient solutions in an aqueous solvent as a type of horticulture and subset of hydroculture. Benefits Of Growing Hydroponically  When growing hydroponically, the plants do not receive viable nutrients like potassium silicate. But through hydroponics, you can control the number of nutrients your plants provide, including potassium silicate. Through this method, you save on water, and it also helps you give a higher yield of plants.  What We Offer  At Zaclon, we offer multiple grades of hydroponics for our clients. Our grades are also highly customizable so that we can create any industry need.   Learn More About Hydroponics  If you’re considering growing your plants hydroponically, Zaclon is here to help! Click here to contact us today for more

Posted By Craig Keeley
May 10, 2021 Category: General

Quilon® Contains Nature’s Own Chromium+3               Quilon, Zaclon LLC’s Release Treatment products, are a safe and proven source of release for your paper and film packaging applications. Quilon is produced from Chromium+3, the Essential Nutrient form of Chrome. Research has shown that Chromium+3:             Helps regulate Blood sugar levels             Helps build muscles             Reduces Body fat             Improves Stamina             Helps lower Cholesterol Chromium+3 is non-toxic and is found naturally in soil, water and many foods. The National Research Council recommends that you need 50 to 200 micrograms of Chromium+3 daily. Most people, though, do not receive enough. Typical foods containing Chromium+3 are apples, lobster, mushrooms, beef and peppers. Quilon, though not intended as a dietary supplement, contains 100% Chromium+3 and absolutely no Chromium+6, the heavy metal form of Chromium. Quilon finds use in many Food Contact applications including the lining of sausage casings, hard candy wrapper, cupcake flutes and commercial bakery pan liner. Quilon is FDA approved for use for incidental food cont

Posted By Robert Woods
May 07, 2021 Category: Galvanizing

BLOG 8-Robert M. Woods  RINSING after DEGREASING So, now the soils are removed for the surface of the work---but there may still be a layer of chemical sticking to it.  IF this is coming out of a caustic bath, a direct movement into an acid pickling tank, the layer can actually neutralize some of the acid, wasting it.  IF this is coming from an acidic cleaner such as Hydronet, there is no neutralization; but any Hydronet remaining on the surface is also wasted. To remedy these issues, most operations will have a rinse tank after the degreasing tank, either caustic or acid-type.  For the acid-type, the rinse can be used to make up for any drag-out or evaporation of the degreasing tank—any dragged out degreaser is put back into the degreasing tank.  For the caustic-type, the same make up occurs; and the rinse will prevent much of the neutralization of the following acid tank. Control of a rinse tank then makes economic and process sense—saving the more expensive chemicals and keeping subsequent tanks cleaner.  Controlling the rinse is relatively simple, typically by monitoring pH.  A caustic rinse should not get much above pH 10, and an acid degrease rinse should be around 3 before it is either changed out or at least partially renewed with fresh water.  An additional way to check the rinse is by putting in a clear glass or plastic jar and looking for cloudiness or a layer of oil floating on it—this is a sign that

Posted By Jim Krimmel
April 27, 2021 Category: History

Zaclon is Born!   Inspired by the concept of operating DuPont’s Cleveland Plant as a standalone small business, the MTP (Management Training Process) team turned its attention to determining what that really meant and how far DuPont would go to implement the concept.  The team determined that three key elements which could led to success were: Hiring their own sales force. Incentivizing all employees through a profit sharing and bonus plan. Shedding DuPont corporate overhead costs related to numerous corporate mandates and objectives. Armed with these needs, Joe Turgeon (Product Manager), Stu Schenk (Cleveland Plant Manager), and Jim Krimmel (Cleveland Operations Manager) traveled to Wilmington Delaware to convince DuPont management of these needs and to present the resulting economic projections for the Cleveland plant.  The team met with limited success. Sales Force -  The MTP team felt strongly that the sales effort being put forth by the DuPont marketing division was too diluted and lacking in focus.   As Joe Turgeon put it, “What we have is a bunch of “one percenters” who might call on a Cleveland Plant customer on their way to a “real” account buying titanium dioxide or another of DuPont’s large volume products.”  Cleveland Plant customers, mainly in the galvanizing and welding rod industries, while important, did not generate the kinds of sales revenue favored by DuPont.  The

Posted By Robert Woods
April 21, 2021 Category: Galvanizing

BLOG 7-Robert M. Woods         Last blog was discussing a “pure” acid degreasing approach, using Phosphoric-acid based product such as Hydronet Base, Ricarica, and S.  There is another approach that can be used in some cases, with additives directly into the pickling acid tanks. Hydronet D is the name of our product that can be added directly into Hydrochloric acid tanks at the typical concentrations and temperatures used by North American galvanizers. Acidic Degreasing – in the pickle tank Without help, Hydrochloric and Sulfuric acids are not very effective at removing dirt.  Hydrochloric acid in particular is poor at lifting greases, oils, chalk, and most other soils.  Sulfuric is a little better, but more because it is heated AND attacks scale and rust by “blowing off” the top layers of rust IF it can penetrate the cracks in the scale.  Generally, degreasing with an additive in the pickle tanks is not as effective as a stand-alone tank with SB Clean-Caustic or Hydronet Base or S; however, for lighter duty cleaning where the incoming steels have low levels of oil or grease, this approach can be effective.  If used in combination with a separate stand-alone cleaning tank, the added cleaning power in the pickle can be a “clean-up” for anything the previous tank missed, or for when for one reason or another that tank is skipped.  The approach using Hydronet D ena

Posted By Robert Woods
April 01, 2021 Category: Galvanizing

Galvanizing 106   As noted in the last commentary, tanks with either sodium hydroxide (aka caustic or an alkaline degreaser) or phosphoric or other acid (acid degreaser) are the two most common cleaning solutions for North American galvanizers.  We’ll talk a bit about acid degreasing in this note. Acidic Degreasing – Phosphoric-based As the name implies, acidic degreasing is done using chemicals that have a low pH, below pH of 7.  The issue with acid-side cleaning is that strong acids like hydrochloric or sulfuric are poor at lifting soil from the surface of the incoming steel.  To combat this, most stand-alone acid degreasers use a different acid, phosphoric acid, as the base for the cleaning.  It is not great on its own, though, and so a number of components are added in a very complex balance to get the best cleaning results.  Hydronet, the acidic degreaser from Zaclon, is such a balanced effective degreaser.  Based on phosphoric acid, it has additives to lift soils, greases, oil, and convert them into a “sand” that settles to the bottom of the tank.  In doing this, due to the acid, it also opens up the “cracks” in the rust/scale layer on the steel, and jump-starts the process of pickling (rust removal).  By doing this settling, much less oil and grease is suspended in the liquid, or floating on top of the tank…this contamination would be carried over into the next

Posted By Robert Woods
April 01, 2021 Category: Galvanizing

Robert M. Woods       SO how do we clean parts if we don’t want to use (or only use) mechanical cleaning, or anything but spot-treat with solvent cleaners?   Using dip tanks with either sodium hydroxide (aka caustic or an alkaline degreaser) or phosphoric or other acid (acid degreaser) are the two most common cleaning solutions for North American galvanizers.  We’ll talk a bit about alkaline degreasing here, and acid degreasing next time. Alkaline/Caustic Degreasing Caustic is used interchangeably with sodium hydroxide, the primary component in these types of cleaners.  The high pH (highly alkaline) solution can react with many oils and greases, particularly natural oils, and since it typically is heated to 135 F or more, the bath is more generally active.   Caustic is typically kept at about 10% concentration, by adding fresh caustic solution (50%) or the pellet-form solid.  The strong alkaline nature of this bath does make it more hazardous chemically than most of the other tanks in a galvanizer, and with the heat needed to make it effective the hazard does increase. By itself, the caustic bath is not great at lifting or dispersing the crud from the steel; it needs some form of “boost” to make it most effective.  Soprin’s SB Clean additive both boosts this cleaning power, and also allows the tank to be made safer---110 F instead of 130 plus, and even better, it works best at 3

Posted By Robert Woods
April 01, 2021 Category: Galvanizing

In the last installment, we looked a little at the broad range of cleaning technologies available to a galvanizer.  Picking the right one depends on both experience and a little luck!  If the customer can possibly tell you what sorts of cutting fluids, lubes, etc. they use, picking the right way to clean is simpler.  For example, if they only use a paint marker, and not much else, then there are at least 2 easy-ish ways to take it off---quick spray of paint remover, then a caustic or acidic degrease will likely take it off. Usually, of course, the steel picks up stuff all they way along, from the steelmaker themselves, to the trucking, to the initial fabrication, to secondary fabrication and storage perhaps outside, then more trucking, and possibly sitting in the snow, rain,  wildfire smoke, flooding and mud, even saltwater.  At this point there could literally be hundreds of different things on the steel!  So, what does a cleaner have to do to all of this crud to open things up for the de-rusting?  There are 4 basic technical terms used when talking about what a cleaner does to “clean”. Dissolution:  Chemically reacting with and destroying a soil (saponification by alkali, phosphorylation by acid degrease, simple dissolution by solvents)  OR with pickling, dissolving the iron/iron oxides. Displacement: Moving the soil away from the surface (may involve friction, agitation, and some chemical and surface tension ef