Sonic Horns vs Traditional Soot Blowers

Sooth Blowing is traditional and very widely used.

Sonic Cleaners do have advantage over traditional or alternative (vibration)methods. Sonic is mostly used in silos (cement/flour/wood flow/petro chemical/power plants etc.) to aid material flow.however they can be for any application too. They operate at frequencies very much higher than the resonance frequency and hence, guaranteed not to cause vibrational damage to any vessel or structure. Vibrators in vibration method can causes stress weaknesses within the vessel/pipes/structure etc., to which they are attached. The vibration resonances first have to pass through the vessel wall before reaching the material. With Sonic Cleaner, the higher frequencies are directly inserted into material with 100% efficiency.

Sooth blowers/ Air Blowers/ cannons/blasters with high compressed air guns etc., may not be effective 100% and some actions may cause internal damage / weakness which might prove expensive since inaccessible. .

Sonic are also know as acoustic cleaners, very simple in operation requiring compressed air that blows through some blah blah of tianium diaphgram that oscillate rapidly that creates some blah blah of a sonic sound that is converted to a frequency and blah blah.(when i was a kid there was a whistle that you cannot hear but only dogs can. take this sonic as similar maybe if we keep our ears close it may/ may not damage our ear drums- that will be another thread to start).

The Sonic cleaners only require activating for a few seconds at periodical determined intervals.

Hi Traditional soot blowers operate by using a blast of steam or air to force built up material on the heat exchange surface off, it is a simple and well understood technology. The problem with these is that blowing in one place can cause erosion and eventually leaks in the tubes, to over come this there are rotary soot blowers which some what reduce this effect and rotary retractable soot blower both work quite well but often cause maintenance headaches as they tend to creep slightly, bend and get stuck.

Acoustic cleaners work by flooding the area with sound peridoicaly which causes the particles to come loose from the heat exchange surface and be carried off with the gas flow. As the area is flooded with sound all the faces of tubes are cleaned not just those facing a soot blower. The main disadvantage of acoustic cleaners is they require a larger mounting than a traditional soot blower but existing access doors can often be used for mounting if they are retro fitted after traditional soot blowers have not been enough. Some people burning bio-mass or waste derived fuel use the two systems in tandem as they can get very rapid build up.

If you are in Europe or Asia you could have a look at www.primasonics.com

Or if you are in the States www.sonic-horns.com seem more local.

Hope that helped.

How often and when to blow soot is dependent on changing firing conditions.... during the boiler cleaning (opening) you need to inspect and determine the effectiveness of your systems and your current conditions.

A coal fired chain-grate operation that I was involved in …...blast horns worked wonders for our operation in the fly ash bunker and reasonably well in the economizer section, but added little to the boiler proper.

If adding air horns.......don't forget ….. add this to the lockout tag out procedures.