SAFE Chrome® (HD) for Functional / Engineered Electroplating Applications:

Industrial Hard Chrome Plating is Now Safer to Apply

The problem with existing functional chromium electroplating processes:
For many decades, companies have been successfully electroplating with chromium trioxide and water-based processes (chromium trioxide + water = chromic acid). These existing water-based processes are highly inefficient (typically only 10-20% efficient), and generate a massive amount of hydrogen gas bubbles inside the chrome solution that become entrained with chromic acid mist particles containing hexavalent chromium compounds. These carcinogenic emissions evolve from the surface of the plating bath and must be captured to meet regional, state, and federal regulations. Chrome plating processes also require heavy maintenance to keep them operating, due to the highly corrosive nature of chromic acid.

  • Regulations are becoming more and more stringent against hexavalent chromium making it nearly impossible to capture fugitive chromium emissions. In 2018, The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) published a new Threshold Limit Value (TLV) of 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter for hexavalent chromium exposure to workers. This is 25 times lower than the current OSHA PEL of 5 ug/m3
  • Employee exposure risks are greatly elevated during maintenance activities and when a line is down.
  • Hexavalent chromium exposure lawsuits have become an increased risk that companies face.
  • A growing number of Insurance companies have declined to provide coverage to plating facilities that generate hexavalent chromium emissions and hazardous waste materials.

The Solution SAFE Chrome® can provide:

The SAFE Chrome® electroplating process mitigates the difficult hexa-aqua complex between chromium ions and water by substituting much of the water with a stable Ionic Liquid solution. This substitution allows us to completely eliminate the need for using chromic acid in the process, and therefore eliminating the generation of hexavalent chromium (Chromium VI). This also provides a much easier reduction of chromium 3+ ions to chromium metal. 

SAFE Chrome® is the product of today and the future for surface finishing needs and available at a crucial time when regulatory bodies in Europe and the US are implementing bans on all uses of hexavalent chrome processes.