Altum Technologies

Fouling or accumulation of gunk in pipes and industrial equipment internal surfaces affects a great deal of equipment in a variety of different industries. With equipment like heat exchangers, evaporators and pipelines, one industry that is particularly affected by fouling is the Food and Beverage (F&B) sector. If not cleaned properly, fouling can affect the performance of this equipment and cause serious quality issues in the end product or even worse, become a health hazard to the end customer. And although there are several antifouling chemicals that clean the foul from equipment, they can’t be used in food machines mid-production to avoid health hazards. Thus, a company’s maintenance staff must overlook the problem until they find time to stop food production and clean the machine. However, that may very well be too late from a quality and health and safety perspective, and would require them to dismantle their equipment, leading to downtime and a whole new set of problems. Hence, various F&B enterprises enlist the aid of Altum Technologies—an industrial equipment supplying organization that helps organizations clean fouling from the pipes and internal surfaces of their liquid-carrying equipment using a patented high-power ultrasonic cleaning technology.

Altum’s story began when some customers asked the founders Matias Tainela and Bo Malmberg to provide a system that can clean the fouling inside a pipe without having to open it. Understanding the challenge, the duo realized the considerable market demand to find a way to mitigate the said problem and began their search for an answer.

Their exploration brought them to Professor Edward Haeggström of the University of Helsinki, who built their now-famous Ultrasonic Cleaning solution with his two-person research team.

The software-guided, highpowered ultrasound device is externally applied on top of a metallic surface and emits certain frequencies of ultrasonic waves into the pipeline,which then resonates with the fouling, displacing it from its position non-invasively. The solution can work on almost any metallic surface. As such, the company can be used as the primary cleaning method on multiple use cases. The solution’s core functioning principle is that although the hardware is the same for every application, the software is modified to match the device’s impedance with that of the customer equipment and achieve resonance, impeding the formation and accelerating the breakdown of foul in the equipment. That’s how their customers use Altum’s ultrasound to keep their systems clean.

Altum’s ultrasound cleaning solution is easy to use and easy to install. The staff can train a customer to operate the device in mere two hours, after which they can install the hardware onsite themselves. In addition, the company engages with the consumers by providing them with some of their successful use cases on contact. It also agrees on a specific period when the customer will use them to see the cleaning process and decide best to go forward.

The company’s solution is disruptive for its clients as they don’t need to plan for the cleanings, neither do they have to hire extra personnel for the cleaning. They can keep operating at an average level as the fouling stops accumulating altogether. At the moment, Altum Technologies has 25 customers globally where it provides its solution to companies in the US, South America, Europe, and Asia.Like other companies, Altum also had to play its role in helping the industries in the post COVID-19 world. As a result, the organization has been working towards realizing the concept of customer self-installations and remote commissioning. And because of the solution’s easy-to-install nature, the enterprise didn’t struggle to adapt to the new norms. On the contrary, since no extra personnel was required to install the solution onsite, the hardware sales increased significantly since the fourth quarter.

In recent years, considering their business operation’s impact on the climate, many F&B companies seek solutions that can decrease their water and energy usage footprint. Altum’s Ultrasound Cleaning solution is a step in this direction as it involves using sound rather than any chemical or mechanized solution, thereby reducing CO2 emission. In addition, the company strives to develop more products in this direction to provide its clients with environment-friendly, highly efficient solutions. As Matias Taniela, CEO of Altum, states, “We help our customers to become evermore sustainable with new technologies that increase their efficiencies, and end product output.”