Continental Chemical USA's Chemical News

Hydrochloric acid (HCl) is one of the most commonly used chemicals in a variety of industries like petrochemical, oil and gas, and government but indispensable in oil and gas exploration and production. It is essential in oil well acidizing where HCl is used in tremendous quantities as one of the drilling fluids used during hydraulic fracture stimulation.

In metal finishing, HCl is used to remove iron oxide—more commonly known as rust or scale—from basic steel before further steel manufacturing.

The chemical is also critical in food processing, used in a wide range of applications such as hydrolysis, purification and neutralization.

The process is becoming increasingly attractive and necessary in the oil and gas industry.

Shale gas is well known to anyone with an interest in natural gas sources. It is the gas found trapped in formations of shale, a type of sedimentary rock that is tied to petroleum and natural gas production.

Shale gas has become significantly more important in the oil and gas industry in the past decade. Through the combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, it is being produced in far greater volumes than ever before.

Oil production in the United States has been operating at extremely high levels in recent years. Keeping new and existing wells productive is a contributing factor to keeping the oil boom alive and well. 

One of the most time-honored and effective methods of improving well productivity is acid treatment.

Oil and gas well acidizing is actually a very old process, used by operators for close to 120 years. The use of acid treatments grew considerably after the development of corrosion inhibitors in the 1930s, which protected steel tubulars inside the wells. Since then, acidizing has become one of the most effective and popular methods for companies to ensure the productivity of their wells.

There’s a tiny creature that has wreaked major havoc on homeowners and the entire hospitality for years now—something incredibly small yet troublesome. The bed bug.

According to these statistics, 99.6 percent of U.S. based professional pest management companies encountered these pests in 2013, and they “continue to be the most difficult pest to treat…more so than cockroaches, ants and termites.”

What you don’t know can’t hurt you—this old saying, unfortunately, is often far from the truth. In fact, when it comes to your business, threats you’re not aware of can hurt quite a bit.

Within the supply chain, there are many unknowns, and the longer and wider reaching the supply chain—particularly one with international suppliers—the more chances there are for risk factors. When you’re working with chemical suppliers, it’s imperative to avoid risks at all costs, which means you also want to avoid the unknown.

Hydrochloric Acid, or HCl, has come to serve a wide variety of commercial and industrial purposes, from food processing pH control to wholesale pickling of steel. However, using HCl for any application will require a specific strength or concentration of HCl, which is indicated by the Baumé scale. In this post, we’ll discuss what the Baumé scale means for HCl, and we’ll touch on what HCl concentrations are best suited for which applications.

Although you may not have covered it in your high school chemistry class, the Baumé scale is used widely with HCl products. Essentially, a value on the Baumé scale, or Baumé degree as it’s called, expresses the density of a liquid as it compares to the density of water. Baumé zero is pure, distilled water; anything above zero is denser, anything below is lighter. A Baumé value is calculated by analyzing a liquid using a hydrometer at a controlled temperature, usually standard room temperature (70° F).

The name of something often conjures up certain ideas or feelings about a particular material or substance.  In the end, it doesn’t matter what we call something, only what it is or does. In fact, many items have common names along with common uses.

What’s in a Name?

However, there are some substances possessing a more scientific name, which may sound ominous. For example, some people might be wary of using sodium chloride on food, but have no problem using table salt. Despite the two names both describe the same item.        

Companies involved in hydraulic fracturing sometimes get raised eyebrows when explaining the chemical substances used in the fracturing process. Those unfamiliar names to the layman sound dangerous and threatening. However, the reality is much differen

t once explained in terms people understand. The following are some scientific sounding names for products used in hydraulic fracturing that also have use in everyday life.

As you know, the availability of HCl is extremely limited right now due to seasonal factory shutdowns and some unplanned outages but luckily, we just negotiated an additional 2 truckload per day (7 days per week) allocation of 15% HCl that we can offer for immediate delivery.

Hydrochloric Acid (HCl) is a chemical solution that has been and continues be used in multiple industries, such as food processing, metal production, oil & gas well stimulation, as well as many other industrial applications.  Over the past five years, the growth in usage of HCL has steadily increased.  Interestingly, HCl is a byproduct of over 40 different processes.  And there are over 100 processes that consume HCl.  Because of this, there is an ongoing need for the HCl that is produced or consumed. 

Hydrochloric acid is a clear, colorless, highly pungent solution of diluted hydrogen chloride. It is a very corrosive mineral acid with many industrial uses. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rates and regulates HCl acid as a toxic substance.