Kolkata to Cairo, Munich & More: Acoustic Cleaning Travels

The sights and sounds recalled by myself and our Technical Director Alex Bergus when we have travelled overseas to visit our acoustic cleaning clients are often colourful and fascinating. We have shared many of these already in our acoustic cleaning blog and today we're sharing even more ... and introducing a new boy!

The sights - these can vary hugely, from familiar ones such as looking at blocked silos on a site inspection to coming across unusual cars such as this Ambassador in Kolkata (capital of West Bengal). In production since the late 1950s the 'Amby' is an iconic car in India, based on the 1950s British Morris Oxford and it's not every day that we get to see one!

 

The sounds - these are certainly no less varied. It might be the familiar sound one of our acoustic cleaners being tested after installation on a silo in the hot sun or conversely the unfamiliar grunt of a camel as it passes by on patrol at the Great Pyramids of Giza. Look closely in the photograph below (taken by Alex) and you will see the policeman on his camel. There’s also our post from July (click here) where you can see the camel in question close up!

It is not always hard work out under the hot sun of far flung destinations, however. From time to time we are invited to attend and often speak at international conferences and trade fairs. Here is Alex talking to attendees at a recent Waste to Energy conference in Munich. 

The photograph was taken by our new Marketing and Customer Service Manager Dan Keeling who took the opportunity to meet some of the European Waste to Energy industry's leading players.

Conferences such as these are great opportunities for us to spread the word about our innovative acoustic cleaning technologies and we relish the variety of questions put to us. For example, what are the benefits of acoustic cleaners and how do they compare to traditional steam soot blowers? We can readily answer these questions and it’s always great to be able to do this in person as we get the opportunity to demonstrate not only our expertise in the field but our passion!

However, for those of you that we don’t get to meet, here is a page of the most commonly asked questions we receive, including how the technology works, the importance of the shape, frequency ranges and compressed air requirements.  There are many more questions of course and there has not been one (yet!) that we’ve struggled to answer :)

Blocked Silo Headache? No More!

When they first hear about our acoustic cleaning technology, many people think that audiosonics is the only solution we can offer to aid material flow ... and they would be wrong!

One of the biggest problems for sites with bulk storage silos is silo bridging where the stored material (cement, gypsum, carbon black, foodstuffs, etc) has built up on the inside of the silo walls. The removal of this buildup has traditionally been done manually but putting humans inside a silo does not come without its dangers. So we developed 2 pieces of cleaning equipment to offer our clients, both of which used compressed air but neither of which use audiosonics:

1. The Prima Whip™ for removal internal wall material buildup - see the special feature on previous blog post Prima Whip for cement silos in Egypt 

2. The Prima Lance™ for discharge blockage removal - see the special feature on our blog post Cement plant cleaning success  

These pieces of equipment work independently, used in their own dedicated scenario BUT where a silo is completely blocked, they can be brought together to work in combination. The Prima Lance™ is used to drill into the blocked silo from underneath which allows for the Prima Whip™ to then be installed on top of the silo remove the remaining material.

So if you ever have the unfortunate experience of a blocked silo, we have the answer. Contact us by email, Skype, telephone or fax and we will be happy to help. We have both a technical brochure and CD rom with information about these exciting and incredibly useful non-acoustic technologies.