EPS is an acidless, environmentally friendly pickling process that was developed by The Material Works, Red Bud, Ill.  The process uses a slurry blasting mixture of ordinary water and angular steel grit to remove surface scale from hot roll black material to produce a scale free, clean, rust resistant surface.  Both the water and grit are recirculated for continuous reuse.  The removed scale and depleted grit are filtered from the system for easy disposal.
 
Since EPS is rust resistant, EPS does not require a protective coat of oil to keep it from rusting as is the case with acid pickled material.  As a result, there are many product advantages from this dry EPS product.  In addition to removing scale oxide to acid pickling levels, EPS also mitigates mill surface defects such as small pits, silicon streaks, roller bruises, and even acid pickling stains.
 
The new line consists of a coil prep inspection, uncoiler, peeler breaker, entry crop shear, scale breaker cassette leveler, two eps cells, exit crop shear, tension module, thickness gage, traversing recoiler, coil banding station, parsytec surface inspection system, and electrostatic oiler.