Where the geometry defeats a lance and the deposit defeats a soak, cavitation reaches into the pack and lifts it off. Send the unit dimensions and the deposit, and a specialist will say whether it will fit and whether it will work.
Submit a cleaning request
Four steps: unit, deposit, postcode, contact details.
01The method
Ultrasonic heat exchanger cleaning immerses the unit in a heated tank and drives ultrasound through the liquid, forming and collapsing microscopic bubbles against every wetted surface. The cleaning action is carried by the liquid, never by a tool, so it reaches wherever the liquid reaches. The inside of a fin block, a small-bore core, the far side of a bend: precisely where mechanical cleaning cannot go.
A charge air cooler fin block, a small-bore oil cooler core or a compact plate-fin unit has internal geometry no lance will enter and no brush will pass. Immersed and driven with ultrasound, every one of those surfaces is in contact with the working liquid and therefore in contact with the cleaning action. That is the case for ultrasonics in a sentence: it is not that it cleans harder, it is that it cleans places nothing else gets to.
There is no abrasion and no mechanical contact, so thin aluminium fin, coated surfaces and delicate cores come out clean rather than distorted. Compare that with pressure washing a fin block, where getting the pressure slightly wrong flattens the fin field permanently. On units where the fin or the coating is part of the value, ultrasonics is frequently the only method that does not risk the thing being cleaned.
Immersion cleaning takes hours, not minutes, and the cycle time rises with how bound the deposit is. The unit also has to be removed, transported and physically fit in the tank, which rules out anything large. Where a lance can reach the deposit and the unit is big, jetting is faster and cheaper. Ultrasonics earns its place on the units where that is not true.
02When it is the right call
The question is rarely whether it will clean the deposit. It is whether the unit will fit and whether anything simpler would have reached.
03What happens next
The enquiry goes straight to a contractor who cleans that unit type. There is no qualifying call in between.
You send the unit details, the deposit and the postcode.
The enquiry goes to a specialist set up for that unit type and that fouling.
They come back with method, timescale and price.
The clean is carried out in place or off site, and the unit is tested before it goes back.
04Questions
Whatever fits the tank, and tanks vary a great deal between facilities. Charge air coolers, oil cooler cores, small plate packs and radiators are routine; large shell and tube bundles generally are not.
It is the first question to settle in an enquiry, because it is binary. Sending the overall dimensions instead of the duty is what lets a specialist answer it quickly.
For the internal air-side passages, usually yes. The fin block on a charge air cooler has geometry a lance cannot enter, and oil-bound soot in the middle of the pack is exactly what cavitation is good at.
For the water side, jetting or circulation is normally quicker. It is common to use both: the water side lanced or circulated, the air side immersed.
Yes, and the two work together. The tank holds a heated cleaning solution appropriate to the deposit, and the ultrasound accelerates it. Cavitation disrupts the boundary layer, lifts loosened material away and drives fresh solution into places it would not otherwise reach.
The chemistry is chosen for the deposit and the material as it would be for any immersion clean. The ultrasound makes it work faster and reach further, not differently.
Hours in the tank for the cleaning itself, and longer where the deposit is oil-bound or baked on.
The elapsed time is dominated by removal, transport, rinsing, drying and pressure testing, not by the cycle. Plan it as a several-day round trip rather than a same-day job.
Not in normal use, and that is the principal reason it is chosen for finned and coated units. There is no mechanical contact, so nothing is bent or scoured.
Very prolonged exposure at high power can erode soft materials, so cycle time and power are set for the unit and not turned up as a matter of course. On coated units, state the coating in the enquiry.
More than jetting per unit, and it is priced on tank time and unit size instead of on tube count.
The comparison that matters is against the alternative. On a fin block that a lance cannot enter, the alternative is often replacement, and against a new charge air cooler, immersion cleaning is usually inexpensive.
Unit, deposit and postcode are enough to start. Your details go to a specialist who cleans that unit type. No obligation.
