How Much Chemistry – Liquid

Using the right amount of chemistry is important to successful industrial cleaning.  Since there is no standard convention for expressing the amount of chemistry to use, it sometimes takes a little effort to sort things out.  Chemistry is supplied in either liquid or powder form with several different conventions for each.  Let’s look at liquids …

The Effect of Temperature on Ultrasonics

  The blog The Effects of Liquid Properties on Ultrasonic Cleaning discussed what effect(s) liquid properties might have on ultrasonic cleaning effectiveness.  These are summarized here – – Many physical properties are inherent to the liquid.  De-ionized water, for example, due to its very high surface tension and tensile strength (as a result of its lack of impurities) is difficult …

Maximizing Ultrasonic Energy Transfer

In ultrasonic cleaners, sound waves (vibration) originating from ultrasonic transducers must be efficiently transmitted into the cleaning liquid where they create cavitation bubbles which implode to enhance cleaning.  The weak links in the path from the transducer to the cavitating liquid are typically the  locations or “interfaces” where vibrations must be transmitted from one vibrating …

Ultrasonic Power – Reaching the Limits?

Ultrasonic power has been a topic of much discussion ever since ultrasonic technology was first used for cleaning nearly a century ago. The quest has always been for more ultrasonic power, the thought being that higher power would produce better cleaning results.  As I have discussed earlier, higher ultrasonic power typically requires an increase in the amplitude …

Questioning Particle Generation Due to Cavitation Erosion as a Source of Contamination

Ultrasonic cleaning is widely used for removing particles from surfaces.  It is generally agreed that the high energy of implosions of cavitation bubbles break the bonds holding particles to the surface being cleaned and that liquid motion (streaming) carries the particles away once they have been dislodged.  However, it is also well known that ultrasonic cavitation …

Heat – Definitions and Concepts

Temperature has been identified as one of the important variables in cleaning – arguably the most important.  So I thought it might be worth some time to develop a little understanding of heat – – especially how it is generated and transmitted. Heat is a form of energy.  The amount of heat contained in an object …