Michael UngarCEO of the Industry 4.0 Club

Optimize Industrial Chemical Pretreatment: Live Feeds & Alarms for Efficiency

26 Jan 2026 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:53

In this presentation, Amanda outlines a solution for industrial chemical pretreatment that involves installing sensors and control equipment on all major process tanks—including cleaner, rinse, conversion, and sealer stages—to continuously monitor key performance indicators such as chemical concentration, pH, and conductivity. The system automatically feeds chemicals based on real‑time measurements, eliminating the need for multiple daily manual checks and thereby reducing labor. Live data feeds and configurable alarms are provided to both plant managers and the monitoring team, allowing instant visibility into each stage and rapid response to anomalies. Amanda demonstrates how total‑volume and conductivity alarms can flag issues like excessive cleaner usage, and she explains a typical diagnostic scenario where a misaligned nozzle causes chemical carryover, leading to waste, unnecessary water/chemical feed, and compromised rinses. The overall message emphasizes increased efficiency, waste reduction, and enhanced process control through automated monitoring and remote diagnostics.

Chapters

So when we come in, we're going to install equipment on all of your process tanks. That includes like your cleaner tank, your rinses, conversions, maybe a sealer. And we're going to monitor all of your KPIs. In addition to monitoring, we'll feed chemical in based on the concentration in those stages or pH or, you know, whatever the parameter may be. And this is really reducing manpower. Someone doesn't have to go back there anymore 6 times a day and check, which, let's be honest, no one's actually doing that. So their systems can skew a lot between titrations. And then it also gives insight and eyes on the process from afar. So the plant manager can pull up a live feed of what's happening in, you know, their cleaner stage, for instance, and see what's going on. They'll get alarming. My team gets the alarming. We also have access to to those graphs. So if someone were to call me and say, hey Amanda, I feel like we're using a lot of cleaner, can you tell me if you see anything going on? Or that might be prompted even by me getting alarms. So we can do like total volume alarms. And if I get one of those, depending on who I'm— who it's coming from, I might say something's wrong. And so I would go in and take a look at maybe how much cleaner they've used, Is their rinse conductivity rising? So a lot of times those issues are something as small as a nozzle and a riser just pointing into the wrong stage. And while, you know, maybe one nozzle when they have 400 doesn't sound like much, it can shoot over just a ton of product into the next stage. So you're both losing chemical, then they're continuously feeding water and chemical back into that stage to maintain concentration, and they're just throwing it away in the next stage. And maybe ruining their rinse. So now they're carrying down a product into the next process tank.