Sonomechanics Blog

The year of 2014 was busy and successful, and we are delighted to let you know of some of our achievements:

• In April, 2014, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published ISM’s patent application #US 20140097725 A1, describing a sealed, liquid-cooled high-power piezoelectric transducer. The device can operate continuously (24/7) and may be used in any application of power ultrasound. The transducer is completely sealed to the outside environment, which makes it immune to high-humidity conditions and suitable for the processing of flammable materials, such as fuels and organic solvents.
• In April, 2014, ISM presented recent results on high-quality pharmaceutical nanoemulsion manufacturing at the 43rd Annual Symposium of the Ultrasonic Industry Association (UIA). Procedures using laboratory, bench and industrial-scale high-amplitude ultrasonic processors were described. It was demonstrated that with the use of ISM’s Barbell Horn Ultrasonic Technology (BHUT), the process is directly scalable and appropriate for commercial-scale production. 
• In August, 2014, the USPTO granted ISM a US Patent #8,651,230 B2, which covers major improvements in BHUT. The patent corresponds to an International Patent Application No.: PCT/US2008/068697 and is expected to soon be issued in Europe, the rest of North America, South America and Asia. The patent describes a novel and superior method of transmitting acoustic energy into liquid media during ultrasonic cavitation-mediated processes.
  
• In August, 2014, in collaboration with Allied Innovative Systems, LLC (ALLIS), ISM published a peer-reviewed paper entitled "Continuous-Flow Production of a Pharmaceutical Nanoemulsion by High-Amplitude Ultrasound: Process Scale-Up" in Chemical Engineering and Processing: Process Intensification. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of BHUT-based ultrasonic processing for the industrial-scale production of pharmaceutical nanoemulsions, illustrating distinct advantages of this approach over high-pressure homogenization.
  
• In December, 2014, in collaboration with ALLIS, ISM submitted a peer-reviewed paper entitled "Cell Disruption of S. Cerevisiae by Scalable High-Intensity Ultrasound" to Biochemical Engineering Journal. The paper describes ultrasonic disruption of yeast cell cultures on laboratory and pilot scales, demonstrating it to be a rapid, efficient and simple technique compared to high-pressure homogenization and bead milling. Lysing by sonication is also shown to be more effective than other cell disruption methods for the recovery of periplasmic, membrane-bound, or insoluble recombinant proteins. BHUT-based power ultrasound is shown to have the potential to be scaled up for the industrial production of proteins by cell disruption with the ability to develop into a valuable commercial method.

Our R&D efforts continue in 2015, as we focus of such applications as wet milling, cell disruption, emulsification, degassing and crude oil desulfurization. In addition, this year we are planning to start offering a new industrial-scale ultrasonic liquid processor: ISP-6000. This processor will comprize two large high-amplitude Barbell horns facing each other in a common flow-through reactor chamber, thereby providing unprecedented ultrasonic cavitation intensity.