Simulation and Experimental Study of Acoustic Waves for Cleaning of Soot in Process Equipments

Abstract

Abstract:In any combustion process of a fuel there will be always some unburned carbon (soot) generated and some ash carried with the stack gas stream. Soot, ash, and molten ash (slag) will accumulate at the tube banks of the heat exchangers. Some ash will even melt down at the tube surface. The final result is a layer insulating the tubes against the hot combustion gases. Soot emission from combustion devices, industrial process equipment, cause serious problems to the environment and human health. The formation of ash deposits on heat transfer surfaces has been one of the main problems encountered in industrial process equipment. Ash deposits not only lower the heat transfer rates, resulting in frequent maintenance and unscheduled shutdown.In present experimental and simulation study different length horn are used to measure sound pressure level at various distance and at different input air pressure. Then from literature equation is used to predict sound pressure level required to dislodge ash, soot and dust. Prototype is also built for demonstration.

Environmental dust repelling from hydrophilic/hydrophobic surfaces under sonic excitations

“…Hence, lowering the free energy of textured surfaces provides better opportunities to mitigate the environmental dust particles surfaces via acoustic excitations in terms of sonic waves. Acoustic excitations for dust mitigation have successfully applied in the previous studies to remove soot and ashes from tune banks, particularly at high-temperature applications 22 . The low frequency and high-intensity sound waves were effectively used removing the charged particles (powders) from the collection plate of an electrostatic precipitator 22 .…”

“…Acoustic excitations for dust mitigation have successfully applied in the previous studies to remove soot and ashes from tune banks, particularly at high-temperature applications 22 . The low frequency and high-intensity sound waves were effectively used removing the charged particles (powders) from the collection plate of an electrostatic precipitator 22 . Although acoustic levitation of dust particles enables are swept by the airflow, the flow forming a vortex structure is required for mitigating the levitated particles from the surfaces 23,24 .…”

“…However, generating such flow structures sustaining the cleaning of large areas for prolonged durations remains difficult to achieve. In addition, the particle removal under sonic excitation was studied earlier and the focus was the removal of tooth 22 or charged particles 23 . However, dust particles have larger densities than sooth and low static charges unlike those of the cases reported in the early work 22 .…”

“…In addition, the particle removal under sonic excitation was studied earlier and the focus was the removal of tooth 22 or charged particles 23 . However, dust particles have larger densities than sooth and low static charges unlike those of the cases reported in the early work 22 . Hence, the removal of dust particles from surfaces in dry environments under the sonic influence becomes interestingly new research and accomplishments of dust mitigation from surfaces by sonic excitation becomes fruitful despite the fact that the practical applications of sonic excitation for dust mitigation in: i) cleaning of sensor surfaces for autonomous systems, and ii) efficient operation of solar energy harvesting devices require further investigations.…”