Desalination of Archaeological Iron Objects in Vacuum

Abstract

This work investigates the efficiency of commercially available vacuum containers as a physical deoxygenation method for desalination solutions for archaeological iron. Other factors are investigated as well, such as the effect of cleaning the objects of their corrosion crusts before treatment and drying them between subsequent treatment baths. While only pre-cleaning could be shown to have a statistically significant effect on residual chloride concentrations, use of vacuum shows promising results and deserves to be investigated further.