Reaction-layer asymptotics and the electrochemical pickling of steel

Asymptotic methods are used to explore the role of one of the homogeneous chemical reactions, water protolysis, in a recent numerical model for the electrochemical pickling of steel. The analysis helps to interpret the somewhat surprising results of the original numerical model: that the local current density profile at the pickled strip does not depend on whether the water protolysis reaction is included in the model or not. The analysis also gives a useful systematic approach for determining qualitative estimates for the width of reaction boundary layers at cell electrodes, which can be of help when designing a computational mesh for the numerical solution of electrochemical models that have such layers. This journal is