I¹m a Finnish conservator studying at the Master¹s Programme in Conservation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and I¹m planning a master's project on desalination treatments of archaeological iron.
A part of this project would be to develop routines that would cut down costs and make desalination treatments more accessible for all types of conservation laboratories. In this connection I would be interested in finding out to what extent chloride content in desalination treatment solutions could correlate with conductivity of the solutions. In conservation literature I have found a couple of instances (Knight 1997, Wihr 1975) where conductivity of the treatment solution is used as an indicator of treatment progression. It would streamline the overall process if it was possible to follow the treatment by conductivity measurements . However, desalination treatments in the above-mentioned cases were carried out in pure water with no interfering ions. Modern desalination treatments are often carried out in alkaline solutions with high concentrations of other ions and conductivity is affected by several factors, including pH. Also, the concentration of chlorides gets very low towards the end of a treatment. I am wondering if their effect would still be detectable in conductivity measurements when other ions have much higher concentrations in comparison? I would be very grateful for any tips to previous research where this matter might already have been investigated, as well as for any insights on the topic in general. Sincerely yours, Aleksi Pienimäki Conservator, metal/archaeology Stiftelsen Föremålsvård ****** Unsubscribe by sending a message to consdistlist-le...@cool.conservation-us.org Searchable archives: http://cool.conservation-us.org/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/
