LG Sonic VS Cavitation
Cavitation bubble
Cavitation
Ultrasound applied to water can have different effects, depending on the power, shape and frequency of the soundwave. One of the phenomena caused by ultrasound in water is called cavitation. Cavitation is the formation, growth, and implosive collapse of bubbles in a liquid. Cavitation collapses produces intense local heating, high pressures, and enormous heating and cooling rates. Besides that, production of hydrogen free radicals is induced, which can harm microbes and even react with some molecules in the water, such as algal toxins.
Most ultrasonic algae control devices based on cavitation use relatively low ultrasonic frequencies but a very high power. This power is normally being expressed in W/cm3. For most devices that use cavitation, the power is known to be at least 0.015 W/cm3. This doesn’t seem much, but for a tank of only 1 m3 this would mean a power consumption of 15 kW per hour.
LG Sonic ultrasound treatment
With the LG Sonic ultrasound treatment , the occurrence of cavitation can be disregarded. The power consumption of the units is so low, that the sound pressure in W/cm3 would become about 0.000000000089 W/cm3 (For the LG Sonic XXL plus)
The algae killing effect of LG Sonic is purely based on killing algae by bringing them in resonance. This leads to tearing of different cell organelles such as the vacuole’s tonoplast, cell wall or membrane and the gas vesicles of blue-green algae.
Because different frequencies are used simultaneously different species of algae can be controlled on an efficient manner within a very short time span.
Image of algae in lethal resonance