Water, energy and maintenance solutions provider NCH Europe is helping businesses find relief from the headache of rust removal with Chelade, a chelating agent that simplifies the process.
The product has been designed to be applied directly to rust-coated surfaces, eliminating the need for time consuming scraping or sandblasts to remove external rust before protecting against future corrosion.
Chelating agents offer a more surface-friendly approach to corrosion control.
Many rust treatment solutions on the market contain an acidic composition that, while it may remove rust efficiently, can cause damage to the underlying surface in the process.
In addition, these solutions require pre-treatment of effected surfaces to remove surface rust as well as the application of a primer before they can be used.
Chelade is a water-based polymeric rust converter which causes no damage to metal surfaces and eliminates of the need to remove rust prior to application.
The product can be painted directly onto surfaces without pre-treatment as it encapsulates and dissolves rust, converting it into a heavy-duty primer. This massively reduces the surface preparation time maintenance engineers need to invest in rust management.
After applying NCH Europe’s simple solution, maintenance engineers can safely paint directly on the surface, as Chelade is compatible with most paints.
“Rust has a tendency to creep in slowly over time, with maintenance engineers becoming blind to it, so it’s important to react quickly when rust gets out of hand,” explains Peter Crossen, VP of the Maintenance and Partsmaster Innovation Platform at NCH Europe. “The encapsulation provided by Chelade allows engineers to bypass the time consuming and costly pre-treatment stages in rust management and get to protecting their surfaces sooner. This is particularly useful for tackling rust in hard-to-reach areas.
“For example, a business operating in the construction sector may find that a high part of a metal building has begun to corrode. If it’s a difficult part to get to, pre-treatment can make the whole process a lot more complicated. By using a product like Chelade, you can make rust work for you, literally turning the problem into the solution.”
Chelade is suitablel for use on equipment, storage tanks, vehicles and walkways where the application temperature is above 1˚C. This makes it suitable to businesses operating in the automotive, construction, manufacturing and transport sectors among many others.
