Question

What are acidic and basic fluxes?

Answer 1

Hint: Flux is a chemical cleaning agent. The water soluble fluxes are divided into two categories, organic and inorganic based on their composition. They are used to remove the gauge from the concentrated ore in its molten state called flux. Example, ammonium chloride, zinc chloride.

Complete step by step answer:
What is Flux?
Flux is the substance added during the extraction of metals. On heating it reacts with the impurities to form molten mass known as slag. It’s a chemical purifying agent or a cleaning agent. Commonly used in metal joining and metallurgy. The main function of flux is to prevent filler materials and base oxidation. It is a substance that is almost inert at average room temperature, but can be intensely reduced when exposed to higher temperatures, which prevents metal oxide formation.

So, let’s see about acidic and basic fluxes.
Acidic flux:
Acidic flux is the flux which comes from the substances like Lewis acid such as $Si{O}_2$, $H_{3}P{O}_4$ etc.
It is used in metal welding or extractive metallurgy or Smelting. Silica is used to remove basic impurities such as lime CaO or MgO.
Basic flux:
It is almost similar to acidic flux but the only difference is that we take basic substances like CaO for welding process or smelting. Basic fluxes like lime, magnesium oxide are used to remove gauge such as $Si{O}_2$.

What are the types of flux?
There are three types, rosin flux (R), rosin mildly activated (RMA), rosin activated (RA). Each of them has a different level of activators, the agents enabling the flux to deoxidize and clean.

Note: When soldering circuit boards we need to use flux; almost all solder for electronics use has an internal core of flux, so you usually don’t need to add more. Welding flux is a combination of carbonate and silicate materials used in welding processes to shield the weld from the atmospheric gases.