We did none of the above. In my figuring, IF hydrochloric acid showed up as a 1:1 ratio of chloride (if that makes any sense) there would have had to be about 2.5 gallons of acid per tank introduced. I admit, I don't know the specifics of how something like hydrochloric acid shows as chloride, but this seems like something that would have been an obvious error in an addition.
Is this thinking correct or would a much smaller amount of something like hydrochloric acid result in the extremely high chloride levels? How much acid would have had to be added to a 500 gallon tank to produce 5100 ppm chloride? I appreciate all of your comments.
As an aside, we did add an improper amount of barium carbonate to our plating bath due to an improper tank volume in the calculation. This addition dropped our sulfate level to near zero (.02 oz./gal.). We did not see any ill effects in our finished product due to the chloride taking the place of the sulfate as a catalyst as I understand it. Since this addition was only done to the plating tank and not to the reverse etch tank, I had eliminated this as a possible source, as the chloride problem seems to originate in the reverse etch tank. Figured I would throw it all out there, as my experience is very limited in this department.
Thanks again for any and all comments.