Ultrasonic prevention and removal of biofouling from marine electricity generators

生物污垢是指生物材料无用地附着在任何湿润的表面上，随着持续的浸泡，它的厚度不断增加。污垢对船用发电机的所有潜水部件造成严重的结构负荷，降低发电效率，并可能通过堵塞水轮机或水泵中的移动部件而完全使发电机失效。应用于船体的现有防污涂层技术在全球范围内耗资38亿GB pa，但污垢仍然导致额外的燃料成本51亿GB pa。因此，对于船用发电机，提出了一种新的防垢系统，该系统适用于任何发电机设计，该系统采用低功率准连续低kHz导波，模式选择既可排斥生物分子，又可从单一源位置耦合到所有水下发电机组件，以经济高效的方式在不损害海洋生物的情况下防止污垢，100%的表面覆盖率防止污垢，避免所有除垢停机时间。

Bio-fouling is the unwanted adhesion of biological materials to any wetted surface and it grows continuously in thickness with sustained immersion. Fouling causes severe structural loading on all the submerged components of marine electricity generators, lowers the efficiency of generation and can disable a generator totally through the clogging up of moving components in turbines or pumps. Existing anti-fouling coating techniques applied to ship hulls cost £3.8 billion pa worldwide, yet fouling still causes an extra fuel cost of £5.1 billion pa. So for marine generators a novel fouling prevention system is proposed, usable on any generator design, which deploys low power quasi-continuous low KHz guided ultrasonic waves, mode selected both to repel bio-molecules and couple into all the submerged generator components from a single source location, to cost effectively, without harm to marine life, prevent fouling with 100% surface coverage, avoiding all downtime for fouling removal.