Ecofriendly Descaling : Week 11/1/2011

How Descaling can happen without using softeners ?

In last fortnight, we spoke about ‘Scaling’ in pipelines & on heat exchanger surfaces and possible solutions to address this issue. We spoke about a new technology which is eco-friendly.

This technology is called the “Scale Blaster” technology. This technology works on a principle called ‘IMA’ - The Intra Molecular Agitation principle .

This involves a unit, which is composed of a signal cable that is wrapped several times around the pipe and an electronic unit that sends out a complex, dynamic current to produce extremely small, time-varying oscillating fields inside the pipe.  The current that produces the oscillating field is as per Ampere’s Law.

Scale Blaster’s signal produces a unique square wave current that sweeps all the frequency responses from 2,000 - 24,000 Hz at a rate of 20 times a second.  When the strength of the oscillating field varies with time and changes direction, an induced current is produced inside the pipe, which is as per Faraday’s Law of Induction.

As the induced electric field oscillates, all particles which have an electrical charge are affected by the induced field.  This causes the unstable mineral ions to precipitate or collide with each other to the point where the calcium carbonate crystals grow until they become so large that there are no more surface charges left to stick to the pipe walls or heat exchanger surfaces. As a byproduct of this “snowball” effect, freed water molecules become available to remove existing scale, molecule by molecule

The scaling in the pipeline & the heat exchanger surfaces thus gets removed completley without using any softening chemicals & it never returns back. The Scale Blaster unit needs to be installed at one place & it takes care of the pipeline & heat exchanger surfaces down the line depending upon the line size, material, process fluid chemistry, flow rate etc.

In our next article, we will elaborate this technology with more pictures and also tell you about some important aspects to be considered while considering this technology.