Descaling chemistry for hard Namibian water

An inhibited acid contains a corrosion inhibitor that dramatically slows the acid’s attack on sound metal while leaving it free to dissolve scale and rust. That is what makes Chloracid 90 usable for pickling and descaling boilers, pipework and membrane filters: the charge can sit in the system long enough to dissolve carbonate scale without eating the steel behind it. An uninhibited acid of the same strength would descale faster — and leak the vessel a year later. Always neutralise and flush after descaling.

Most Namibian municipal and borehole water is very hard — high in dissolved calcium and magnesium. Every time that water is heated or evaporated (a geyser, a boiler, a cooling tower losing water to the desert air), the minerals precipitate as scale. A few millimetres of scale on a heating element can double its energy use and eventually cracks it. The economic answer is a maintenance descale with Chloracid 90 or Dicafas on a schedule, combined with ongoing treatment from our water-treatment range so the scale never builds to damage thickness.

Acidet — it is the acid cleaner formulated for food-processing equipment, used on stainless-steel piping and hooks, and it is the product Namibian fish and meat plants run before EU inspection certification visits. Chloracid 90 and Pool Acid are industrial products and do not belong on food-contact surfaces. Hydrosan, the peroxide-based acid sanitizer from our sanitizer range, covers the acid-sanitizing step of the dairy cycle.

Dicafas is a sulphamic-acid descaling powder: it is safer to transport and store than liquid acid, doses accurately by weight, and dissolves into a fresh working solution on site — which is why mines and farms far from Windhoek prefer it for cooling towers, radiators and geysers. Liquid Chloracid 90 wins where you need an inhibited pickling bath or a strong circulating descale of fixed plant. If your site is 500 km up a gravel road, powder is usually the right call.