With increasing pressure being applied including new hygiene laws, it certainly is proving to be more difficult to maintain maximum production whilst striving for maximum hygiene along with minimum cross contamination.

With the introduction of Primasonics® Sonic Horns or Acoustic Cleaners as they are better known, all of these three goals can be achieved. Our acoustic cleaners employ sound waves at selected frequencies to both prevent the build up of dry material and also to facilitate maximum flow rates whilst ensuring that the material is fully evacuated from any process or storage vessel.

Here are three typical examples of how our sonic horns solved these differing food problems as we have continued to do in over fifty countries worldwide.

Case 1:

A large brewery had ever increasing problems within its fine milled maize storage silo. The material would cling to the side walls and also bridge over the discharge outlet. This caused severe flow problems, however the more serious problem was that mould growth became established within the silo which necessitated time consuming manual cleaning plus the discarding of considerable quantity of the milled maize.

The silo was totally cleaned and they installed a Primasonics® 75 Hz Acoustic Cleaner (pictured right), manufactured from 316 grade stainless steel as standard. The sonic horn was sounded for a few seconds at pre-set intervals and since its installation, fine maize build up, along with its associated mould problem, have been eliminated with 'mass flow' evacuation of all the material at maximum flow rate.

Case 2:

A leading US food company's port based overseas facility manufactured specialist sugars. Not only has the product a very fine particle spectrum, it was also sensitive to bacterial contamination, especially from moisture. Again this company had massive flow problems with the fine specialist sugar building up on the side walls of the silo.

Their only previous answer was to shut the silo down and commence a lengthy water wash down process which took several days each time. This in itself caused a greater bacterial contamination problem as any water droplets left behind inside the silo, immediately encouraged bacteria to begin to grow.

They also installed our food grade 75 Hz Acoustic Cleaner/Sonic Horn on top and since then have never had fine sugar build up within the silo. Of course, water wash down is now thankfully a thing of the past! This same large food company have now commenced installing a range of our Primasonics® Sonic Horns within their US plants.

Case 3:

A leading world manufacturer of powdered gravies, and sauces carried out the final drying and flavoring process within a cylindrical spray drier which incorporated a bag filter section. This batch drying process had to be stopped every other batch due to clogging of the filter media by fine powders. The filter bags would have to be removed, replaced and washed. This lost them considerable production time and they sought a solution which would only require them to change the filter bags between brand changes.

Twin Primasonics® 230 Hz Sonic Horns were installed, located just under the lower end of the filter bags. The result was all that they had hoped for and process throughput was significantly increased.

There are many areas within food plants where the introduction of our acoustic cleaning technologies will reap instant rewards in improving material flow, prevent build up and significantly reduce cross contamination.

Process plant such as:

• Silos & Hoppers
• Baghouse Filters and Cyclones
• ID Fans
• Ducting both gravity and pneumatic types
• Batch Mixers & Blenders
• Spray Dryers

Both our 316 grade fabricated Quattro Range and our 316 grade spun stainless steel Prima Range are totally suitable for use within all types of food plants and comply with 3.A Sanitary Design & OSHA regulations.