Modern Day David & Goliath - With Acoustic Cleaners

I am sure that most of us are at least slightly familiar with the biblical story of David and Goliath – King Saul and the Israelites faced the Philistines in battle at Socoh in Judah. The Philistines has a giant of a champion warrior called Goliath who came in front of his army twice per day for forty days to challenge the Israelites to send our their champion to fight him. The Israelites were afraid and so there was no one to challenge Goliath. Young David, who was bringing food to his brothers decided to fight the Philistine monster and Saul reluctantly agreed. Goliath appeared armed to the teeth whilst David brought with him only his sling and his staff. The rest, as they say, is history. David fired a stone from his sling which struck Goliath on the forehead – winner David!

Recently at a gala presentation event sponsored by the CN Media Group, held at the Rheged Centre near Penrith, Primasonics International fought off the challenge of the massive blue chip company BAE Systems to scope the prestigious Exporter Of The Year Award due because 85% of Acoustic Cleaners sales are exported to over 45 countries world wide. All of us at Primasonics International feel extremely proud to have won this award and in the process defeated the Goliath company of BAE Systems. The photograph shows our Export Manager, Lisa Robinson receiving the award.

Award Rewards For Acoustic Cleaning Technology

Primasonics International has been privileged in the last 3 years to receive established British industry awards in recognition of its success as an innovative technology and export trade company with its range of acoustic cleaners.

In 2005 we won 2 awards - the 'Pride of Cumbria Award For Innovation' and the 'Passport To Export' award. The latter was presented to me personally by BBC Presenter Adrian Chiles in recognition of our success in the international market, having increased our turnover in export trade by no less than 400% in the 2 years 2003-2005.

In 2006 we were honoured with the North Regional National Award for Innovation.

In 2007 with over 200 finalists and guests present. we won the prestigious Innovation & Technology Award in the Cumbria Business Awards. The reason quoted by the judges for our declaration as category winner was that we had been able to demonstrate a powerful worldwide status in a challenging environment and were considered to be a hi-tech, fast growing company.

This month (October 2008) we will be 1 of only 3 finalists nominated for the Exporter Of The Year Award at the CN Group Business Awards on 30 October. The category sponsors are HSBC bank and the main award sponsors are Invest in Cumbria and Business Link Northwest. Whether we win or not, we feel privileged to receive this nomination, particularly in the light of the company we will be keeping in the final - no less than:

BAE Systems (submarine and shipbuilding services)

3SL (software systems company supplying the likes of Nasa, Samsung and Boeing.

Good company indeed. Irrespective of who wins the award, there will be no losers in this 'race'. All of us have made significant achievements in export trade and are helping the British economy retain a worldwide high profile for innovation and technology.

Photographs from our previous export awards presentations

Fit For Purpose?

OK I am the first to admit that I am getting a little bit ‘rounder’ as I get older and that I need to do something about it. This was brought home to me in no uncertain terms last week when I made a visit to a large power generation plant in London. So off I set to catch the 7:29 train from Penrith to London, with my small suitcase containing all my safety gear – overalls, safety boots, hard hat, goggles, high visibility jacket and gloves.

I arrived at Euston Station and caught the tube to Tottenham Vase (not far from the Spurs ground), then a short taxi ride to a fantastic plant called London Waste. This power generation plant has five complete boiler lines and burns all the collected household waste for London. The energetic and enthusiastic plant manager was interested in installing Primasonics acoustic cleaners within one of his five economiser sections of waste to energy boilers. He had no experience of acoustic cleaners in economiser cleaning and obviously needed to talk through our proposals and feel reassured that acoustic cleaning technology would far surpass his existing steam soot blowers in terms of efficiency, performance, unit cost and maintenance costs.

One of the boilers was off line and so after getting kitted out in all my safety gear we headed into the plant to take a very close look at the economiser. The easy bit was simply looking in through several side wall hatches via access platforms. My ‘guide’ then suggested that we needed to go to the very top of this large piece of plant and ‘pop’ down through a hatch into the unit, balancing on steel girders in order to take some key photographs. Maybe it is some sort of obsession with me but I find that most power plant managers are extremely thin, fit men and so he quickly disappeared down through the hatch onto the steel inner frame. OK I managed to squeeze myself down after him and made myself ‘comfortable’ sitting on the steelwork. It turned out that this ‘look see’ was extremely important as there were a set of internal baffles which were not clearly seen on the dimensional drawing which would affect the type and position of the acoustic cleaners.

Ok job done, so now to get out – ‘how do we achieve this?’ I asked – ‘easy, just swing over onto this beam, grab the side of the hatch above you, pull yourself up and swing your legs out', came his reply which he quickly achieved. After a short prayer, I managed to get my upper body out of the hatch; however it took some time to ‘extract’ the lower half. I pulled and tugged at the same time promising faithfully to myself to start visiting the gym again. Finally I was free and all in one piece.

The result of my day’s activities was to form a friendly and trusting relationship with the plant manager and to return to Penrith tired but happy that use of each existing soot blower on that site will be redundant and replaced by the modern, innovative acoustic cleaners.

Photo: acoustic cleaner in position for economiser cleaning

The Hidden Power Of Sound!

Imagine a world without sound – no bird song, human voices, music – like total deafness.

Scientists tell us that without our ears to hear, there would be no sound. However sound is not all aural; indeed sound may be described as the passage of very rapid pressure fluctuations through a medium by means of a vibrating force. Our ear does not actually hear sound; it is a pressure sensitive mechanism that detects very rapid pressure fluctuations which we interpret as sound.

To learn more on this subject visit this link

I give you two examples to prove that, in fact, we do not either need ears or indeed be able to hear to experience the effects of sound.

In a human environment, a deaf person can ‘hear’ what someone else is saying by means of feeling the vibrations of someone talking against an inflated balloon – he or she are ‘reading’ the vibrations which come from ‘a vibrating force’ the tongue, passing these differing vibrations through ‘a medium’, the balloon. So sound is not only aural, it is vibrational, mental even. The classic example is Beethoven who composed symphonies in his mind and via vibrations even though he could not, in the true sense of the word, hear his own music. Likewise, Enrico Caruso, the great Italian tenor, was capable of shattering a wine glass with his powerful high C – the glass actually shattered due to the particular powerful vibrational frequency achieved. I mentioned in one of my first ‘blogs’ ‘Blast From the Past’ that I was inspired to begin studying the powerful debonding effect which sound waves at particular frequencies had after watching a video of the Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which the evil Blofeld caused a huge avalanche simply by exploding a flare in the sky.

Over the last ten years Primasonics International has invested heavily to produce a range of high quality, high performing acoustic cleaners which are employed in a wide range of industries and applications to both prevent particulate build up and facilitate maximum material flow and it is in fact these very rapid pressure fluctuations which cause dry material to debond from both adjoining particles and from any structure. This innovative technology, encompassed within our range of acoustic cleaners, is now solving material build-up and flow problems within a wide range of industries and plant applications in over 45 countries worldwide.

Coal Dust - The Badge Of Miners

Coal dust – the kind that coats a miners face and body – his lungs. It fills his mouth so that he has to spit, rinse his mouth from time to time with his water bottle. Imagine a long-wall face, underground a hundred metres or so, where half a dozen miners are strung along it. The ‘stonemen’ on the night shift have increased the height, above and below the coal, however the ‘fillers’ still have to work on their knees. They wear knee pads and most have on a short-sleeved vest and shorts. The coal has been ‘fired’ by placing charges at several metre intervals – the coal dust – a thick heavy cloud! The ‘fillers’ wait until it settles a little although the air is never clear. The lights on the miners’ safety helmets blink through the murk, their heads swinging back and forth as they shovel the coal behind them to be taken away to the surface. This goes on all shift and each miner on the face is filling a rectangle of coal one metre high, several metres long, by the depth of the cut, about 1½ metres.

In 1948 the ‘fillers’ on a long wall face at a North East British Colliery earned £20.00 (€25/$40) per week. The ‘stonemen’ earned half that amount per week and unskilled men working underground earned around a quarter of the ‘fillers’ wage per week. They came to the surface after each shift, coated with coal dust. At that time the colliery did not have its own baths, so the men went home dirty. Coal dust got into everything and was even sealed into the wounds they received whilst working – forming blue streaks – The Badge of Miners!

I cannot take credit for writing this imaginative and informative piece - it was written by my very good friend Dr Jeff Smith, himself once a miner. It does however concatenate with the solutions that my company Primasonics can offer those power generation plants and cement plants which handle coal, especially fine milled coal which tends to both ‘rathole’ and ‘bridge’ in coal silos & hoppers. It is perhaps fitting that our Acoustic Cleaners can eliminate some modern day problems associated with the storage and discharge of fine coal.

Acoustic Cleaners To Bicycles - Innovation Runs In The Family

In previous blogs, I have mentioned that I was brought up in the small country town of Dromore, Co Down, Northern Ireland.

My mother’s maiden name was Magill which was a widely known family name in the surrounding area. Although with the development of our dynamic range of acoustic cleaners I claim to be an innovative sort of chap, it seems that perhaps I am following in the Magill family tradition.

My mother’s father was James Magill who was a cobbler in Dromore and the family lived in a small terrace house built in 1870. My grandfather used the front room for his cobbling business and the family, all eight of them lived in the back room and upstairs. Around 1903 cycling was becoming very fashionable and indeed affordable and so he decided to be innovative and learn how to build and repair bicycles. At that time this was quite a risky venture and so he kept up his cobbling during the day and concentrated on the cycle business during the evening and night time. He always had a small sign on display which read ‘DO NOT ASK FOR CREDIT AS IT OFTEN OFFENDS’

Well he obviously made a success of his new innovative business venture and in 1913 he bought the house next door to extend his cycle build and repair business. Indeed some years later he moved to a larger house in Princess Street, Dromore which still stands today. The original house in Meeting Street where my mother was born was demolished brick by brick and re-built at the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum near Belfast.

I had a brief opportunity to visit our original Magill family home last year and here I am standing in my Grandfather’s cycle repair room.

Innovative business ideas seem to run in the family!

Acoustic Cleaners - 100% Effective – Proof Positive!

I firmly believe that not only do we design and build:-

• The best quality acoustic cleaners
• Offer the widest range of models
• With the most powerful and consistently reliable performance

but we also have the finest technical back-up and R & D department. Let me give you an example of why I can make this claim.

One of the most frequently asked questions is:
Will your Acoustic Cleaner Damage My Steel Boiler Or Concrete Silo?
Well the answer is most affirmatively - NO
However can we prove it – YES

So let me show you the results of one of our many extensive field trials which proves that our powerful sonic waves, at the frequencies we use, that is between 420 Hz and 60 Hz, are totally absorbed by the material to prevent particulate build up and maximise material flow.

One of our flour mill clients had a series of concrete flour silos and they were having a lot of problems with flour building up on the side walls, then collapsing on mass and spilling out like water from the silo dischargers. They were very keen to install our acoustic cleaners/sonic horns, however they had great concerns that the sound waves would be absorbed by and damage the concrete silos.

In their field trial we measured both the constant existing vibrations that occur within and around the concrete silos, such as fork lift truck passing by or electric motor vibration etc. We did this by fitting accelerometers to the silo walls. We then placed a sound meter some 10 metres/33’ down the silo and the silo was filled with flour. Finally we installed a Model PAS-75 acoustic cleaner/sonic horn on top of the silo and sounded for a few seconds at periodic intervals.
The graph below measures Frequency along the X axis and dB along the Y axis.

The orange graph is measuring the already occurring vibrations of the silo picked up by the accelerometers and the blue graph is recording what the sound meter, buried deep within the flow is picking up. You can clearly see that the sound meter is clearly recording a high burst of acoustic energy at 75 Hz and again at 150 Hz (2 x 75 Hz). You will also clearly see that none of these powerful ‘debonding’ sonic sound waves have been absorbed into the concrete silo structure.
This is just one of many similar field trials which we have carried out on silos, boilers, baghouse filters and ESPs.

Proof positive that the power of our acoustic cleaners is 100% effective in debonding the material with 0% effect on the structures.