Explosive Cleaning - The Sonic Alternative

Sonic horns have in recent years become established as the preferred alternative to soot blowers. This mechanical engineering forum page offers an insight into why this is.

However, the soot blower is not the only method of industrial cleaning to find itself rivalled, indeed overtaken, by sonic horn technology. There's a method called 'Explosive Cleaning', favored by power plants and waste to energy plants for boiler cleaning in particular, whereby an explosive gas is ignited within the boiler, producing shock waves which dislodge material build up. Explosive cleaning can also be used to dislodge ash build up in areas of plant such as superheaters, economizers and coal silos. Note: If you are involved with silo storage, you can read more about silo cleaning with audiosonic technology.

Whilst explosive cleaning can be effective, it carries with it some distinct disadvantages when compared to sonic horns.  The main ones are:

• Explosive cleaning of a boiler means the boiler has to be shut down. Downtime costs money.
• Explosive cleaning can be too slow for a plant's needs. 
• Explosive cleaning needs greater advance planning before being introduced. 

Photo: Sonic horn installed for boiler cleaning

Our involvement with many industrial plants around the world has taught us many things over the years and one of the most important is that minimal downtime is crucial. For that one reason alone, explosive cleaning just cannot compete with sonic horn cleaning.

Improving Thermal Efficiency With Sonic Horns: Boiler Economizer Cleaning

Economizing on energy consumption is vital for all types of industry but surprisingly this is no new concept.

It was more than 150 years ago in fact that the very first successful design of economizer was used - in steam engines. Patented by Edward Green in 1845, it increased the steam-raising efficiency of the boilers.

Today the need to reduce energy consumption is an even greater priority and applies to most industries around the world. For them, improving thermal efficiency and generating as much heat as possible from burnt fuel is key. This is where maintenance and correct functioning of economizers comes in. Keeping economizers clean is crucial. That may sound simple but it is not!

Many economizers have a complex tube configuration (plain tubes and finned tubes) which means that although traditional soot blowers might be installed to do basic cleaning, there can be problems leading to the shutdown of the boiler for manual cleaning. This is where sonic horns (aka sonic soot blowers) come into their own.

The following testimonial from one of our clients who operates a large waste-to-energy plant speaks for itself:

"We have had an internal problem with our Economizer mid bank steam soot blowers for some time. The tube configuration in that bank is such that it has plain tubes at the top and finned tubes at the bottom of the same bank. Historically, we would have had to shut the boiler down to go into the economizer pretty soon after the development of such a fault in order to repair the steam stoot blower and manually clean the tube bank because of the rate of fouling being so high. However, currently draught loss has remained insignificant thanks to the operation of the sonic horns. I would happily endorse your product to any interested party in the future".

This photograph shows 3 of our sonic horns fitted to the economizer of the waste to energy plant referred to in the above testimonial. Read more about our sonic horns for boiler economizer cleaning.

My Local ‘Sonic’ Ghost

I was born and spent many years of my youth in the small Irish town of Dromore, County Down.

On the outskirts of the town lay the Gillhall Estate, built between 1670 and 1680 by John Magill; it consisted of a fine, impressive house and various farm buildings. My mother’s family were Magill, however I never knew of any traceable family connection. When I was living in Dromore, Gillhall was renowned for being one of the most notorious haunted houses in Ireland and nobody ever visited it at night. The story goes that as children Lady Nichola Beresford and Lord Tyrone vowed that whoever died first would come back in the form of a ghost to prove to the other that there was an afterlife.

Well, one stormy night in 1693 whilst Lady Beresford was residing at Gillhall, she was visited by the ghost of Lord Tyrone who informed her that indeed there was life after death. Lady Beresford needed convincing that he was a genuine apparition and not just her having a bad dream so he made one startling prediction and also left two tangible signs to confirm that his ‘visitation’ had indeed really happened. First of all, he informed Lady Beresford that she would die on her 47th birthday. Then he touched her wrist which made the flesh burn and shrink but caused her no pain – Lady Beresford thereafter always wore a black ribbon around her wrist and this could be seen in a later portrait of her at Howth Castle, County Dublin. Lord Tyrone also placed his hand on a chest of drawers and the imprint of his fingers was burnt into the wood. This piece of furniture showing the charred imprint of four of his figures remained at Gillhall for some considerable period of time.

His grim prediction which was to come to pass on her 47th birthday in 1712, she believed passed without incident. So relieved was Lady Beresford that the following year she held a special birthday party only to be reminded by her old clergyman that it was actually her 47th birthday that year. ‘You were born in 1666’ he explained – ‘Then you have surely signed my death warrant’ she screamed in reply and rushed to her room where she let out a cry and died.

When the 5th Earl of Clanwilliam brought his bride to Gillhall in 1909, she was visited by both ghosts of Gillhall and fled, leaving the Gillhall standing empty until it burned to the ground in mysterious circumstances - the very year I left Dromore. You can read the full story here

So why a 'sonic' ghost? Well, it's just the way I see things really - my business involves understanding sonic waves, as in sonic horn cleaning, so I associate the idea of something being made to move without any visual explanation - ie. a sonic horn generates audiosonic acoustic sound waves that make particles move without the need for physical intervention (baghouse cleaning is a great example of this).