Boiler Plants – Why Sonic Soot Blowers Are The Best Deslagging / Cleaning Option

Ash deposited on the heating surfaces of a boiler acts as a heat insulator, thus significantly reducing thermal efficiency. The result is that less heat is transferred to the water to raise steam and more heat is wasted up the flue. This leads to higher fuel consumption and/or poor steaming.

Until recent years, the cleaning or boiler deslagging system most commonly used was a ‘steam’ soot blower. The media used in soot blowers may be saturated steam, superheated steam, compressed air or water or a combination of these. There is certainly a greater risk of tube erosion and corrosion due to the moisture contained within saturated steam and water. Superheated steam is preferred due to the fact that it actually also produces a degree of sonic velocity – additional proof that sonic energy is a powerful tube cleaning tool.

Conventional soot blowers are generally either the long retractable type or the short rotary type.

Disadvantages of steam soot blowers are that they are costly to purchase, install, operate and maintain. In addition, they are generally only used on an eight hour cycle thus allowing the ash to build up and sinter or ‘bake’ on the heat tubes. They also cannot clean the entire circumfrance of each tube, rather they strike the leading edge of the tube and thus give rise to the very costly twin problems of tube erosion and corrosion.

The sonic soot blower approach is totally different. Sonic soot blowers use high energy – low frequency sound waves, usually between 350 Hz and 75 Hz for a few seconds only, usually every 5 – 10 minutes to prevent the ash from being deposited on the tube banks. Sound waves travel at 344m per second and in a 360° radius thus providing total, powerful sonic sound wave cleaning. Because of the frequencies used, sonic soot blowers do not cause any damage to either the tube bundles or the boiler structure. All that is needed to create the sonic sound wave is standard plant compressed air which causes the titanium diaphragm housed with the Wave Generator to oscillate. This base note is then converted into the selected key fundamental frequency by the size and shape of the horn section. Sonic soot blowers are easy to install and have very low operating and maintenance costs.

Right: TYPICAL SONIC SOOT BLOWER INSTALLATION: QUATTRO MODEL Q3

Read more about the advantages of sonic soot blowers

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