The Critical Role of Passivation to Breweries, Wineries, and Distilleries

New brewers, wineries, and distillers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on brand new stainless steel equipment. Many don’t know about caring for and conditioning the new equipment and this could lead to many problems down the road. Your brand new stainless steel isn’t like a new car where you can just jump in and drive around. You have to do a few things to the metal before you start producing. You can make good batches now, but maybe in 5 to 10 years your stainless steel starts to corrode a bit due to the acidic environment. That hundred thousand dollar investment that you put into equipment just went down the drain and could cost you your business.

You want to take care of your stainless steel equipment and your investment. A good way of doing this is to clean and passivate the equipment. This will increase the longevity of the equipment and provide a more consistent product.

The first step after you purchase your new stainless steel equipment is to clean it. Next comes the passivation. Passivation is the chemical process that removes free iron from the surface of stainless steel for the purpose of enhancing corrosion resistance. Allegheny Surface Technology offers either citric or nitric acid passivation based on your specific requirements. Passivation creates a chromium-rich surface which can form an invisible inert (passive) oxide layer as soon as it is exposed to an oxygen-containing environment (air).

Passivation will not change the appearance of the stainless steel. Passivation will not cause any change to the surface roughness. To verify the effectiveness of the passivation, Allegheny Surface Technology typically performs ferroxyl testing to ensure a successful passivation.

Have more questions? Feel free to contact one of our Passivation specialists by calling (866) 266-9293, or Request a Quote right here on our website.