Determination of aluminum rolling oil and machinery oil residues on finished aluminum sheet and foil using elemental analysis and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy coupled with multivariate calibration

Abstract

The surface characteristics of rolled aluminum products such as sheets and foils are strongly affected by the particular rolling process and the type of aluminum rolling oil compositions. After the rolling process, coiled aluminum sheets and foils undergoes annealing to form desired crystal structure and remove the rolling oil residues. Depending on the time and the temperature that rolled aluminum exposed for annealing, rolling oil residues are mostly removed from the coiled aluminum products but if there is any contamination in rolling oil due to hydraulic and gearing parts of the rolling systems these heavier oils are not easily evaporates from the aluminum surfaces especially inner parts of the coiled aluminum sheets and foils. These rolling oil contaminants create serious problems for the some specific applications of these aluminum products in certain industries such as automotive and coating as remaining thin oil layer prevents proper painting and coating. Therefore, it is very crucial for the rolling industry to be able to monitor the heavy oil contamination on the rolled products and determine the source of these contaminants .In this study, it was aimed to develop a nondestructive infrared spectroscopic method combined with chemometric multivariate calibration techniques for the quantitative determination of rolling oil residues and contaminants on the rolled aluminum products. To be able to generate multivariate calibration methods, an industrial elemental analysis system was adopted for the quantitative determination of heavy oil contaminants on the rolled aluminum products and these were used as reference values for infrared analysis of the same samples. In addition, apart from conventional use of elemental analysis systems for the total organic analysis, the raw data (raw chromatogram) obtained from elemental analysis was used to directly generate multivariate calibration models for each contaminant by using synthetically contaminated surfaces as the calibration samples. The results promised that elemental analysis can be used not just for the total organic content but also specifically to determine amount of each contaminant on the aluminum surfaces, it is also, expected that infrared spectroscopy with grazing angle spectra collection accessories can be used for nondestructive analysis of these contaminants.s.