Sonic soot blowers

Because they employ non-destructive sound waves, unlike steam soot blowers they eliminate any concerns over corrosion, erosion or mechanical damage and do not produce an effluent stream.

The sonic soot blower operates in the same manner, the ‘base tone’ being produced by passing compressed air into a wave generator which houses a titanium diaphragm causing it to oscillate rapidly.

Sonic soot blowers create a rapid series of very powerful sound induced pressure fluctuations which when transmitted into the ash or particulate, cause them to de-bond from other particles and from the heat transfer surface to which they are bonded and so carried away in the gas stream.

This is in contrast to the operating principles of steam soot blowers which are usually only employed at most once every eight hours by which time the ash has built up and baked hard onto the heat transfer surfaces.

Sonic soot blower cleaning technologies can be applied in superheaters, generating sections, economizers, and airheaters as well as downstream equipment such as electrostatic precipitators, baghouse filters and fans.