Category: Liquid Nozzles

Physics and the Tank Cleaning Nozzle

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

After boot camp, the Navy sent me to Machinist’s Mate A-School to learn about shipboard steam propulsion plants. The first week was a course called Propulsion Engineering Basics. Since we were learning about how to use steam to move something (turbine blades), the class started off with a lesson on Hero’s Engine:

1,500 years before Isaac Newton put his Third Law of Motion in writing, Hero (or Heron) of Alexandria described this device that would demonstrate that, for every action (in this case, steam discharging from the tubes’ nozzles) there is an equal and opposite reaction (rotary motion of the apparatus), just like Newton said. Some say Hero made one and displayed it for public amusement, but evidence of that is sketchy. In any case, it DOES work.

Another demonstration of Newton’s Third Law is familiar to golfers & lawn care enthusiasts: the rotating sprinkler:

The action of the water exiting the nozzles at an angle causes a reaction, in the form of rotary motion of the sprinkler head.

Another practical application of Newton’s Third Law is an industrial one: tank cleaning. Some tanks have access ports or utility holes, so personnel can physically enter, or at least stick a sprayer inside to clean the walls. Oftentimes, though, they might contain materials that are toxic, harmful, or just plain messy, and any penetrations in the tank that need to be covered or sealed off are potential leak points. So, instead of manually sticking a spraying device inside & moving it around, you need something that’ll fit through a small opening and sprays in every direction.

BETE Spray Performance Engineering (a division of EXAIR) offers a number of solutions for tank cleaning/washing, in both stationary (sprays in all directions all the time) and rotating (kind of like the rotating sprinkler in the video above). If you want to know more about the stationary ones, my buddy Jordan Shouse wrote a detailed blog about The Power of the BETE HydroClaw recently.

If you want to know about the rotating types, you’re in luck because I’m going to get to those RIGHT NOW. The BETE HydroWhirl® series come in a variety of configurations and materials of construction. We’re going to look at four of them specifically:

HydroWhirl Stinger — these compact, rotating tank cleaning nozzles are made of 316L Stainless Steel with a 32 Ra surface finish, so they’re FDA compliant. They’ve got Zirconia ceramic bearings, so they’re made for long service life and extreme chemical corrosion resistance.

HydroWhirl Mini — like the Stingers, they’re FDA compliant, with 316L Stainless Steel construction with a 32 Ra finish. They have PEEK slide bearings for longevity and minimal maintenance. They’re suitable for small tanks (up to 6.5 feet in diameter.)

HydroWhirl Poseidon — these are made of FDA compliant, corrosion resistant PTFE, these are ideal for CIP (Clean-In-Place) applications commonly encountered in food, beverage, and pharmaceutical facilities. The slower spinning design makes for longer dwell times for the spray, for greater cleaning impact.

HydroWhirl Disc — this one’s made of 316L Stainless Steel with a PTFE slide bearing. It’s fully submersible, self-flushing, and suitable for small-to-medium size tanks. The rotating, high impact spray produces a pattern with consistent repetition for highly efficient & effective tank cleaning.

Lastly, since we’ve been watching videos, here’s one that shows a HydroWhirl Stinger in action:

If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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The Power of the BETE HydroClaw®

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

Cleaning tanks that contain solids-heavy materials isn’t a simple rinse-and-go task. Whether it’s sediment-laden wastewater, mineral slurries, biomass, grain residues, or thick process byproducts, tanks with large particles demand a cleaning solution that won’t clog, wear out, or lose performance over time.

For these environments, traditional tank cleaning nozzles often struggle. Abrasive solids eat away spray orifices, large particles cause blockages, and performance drops quickly—leading to longer cleaning cycles and more downtime.

This is exactly where the BETE HydroClaw® stands out.

BETE HydroClaw Cleaning the inside of a Tank. Top Right Square is a zoom-in of an active spray pattern. Right Corner is an image of the HydroClaw Nozzle on a yellow background. The bottom of the image is an application photo in an industrial environment.

A Tough Nozzle for Tough Tank Cleaning Jobs

While originally designed for abrasive slurry applications, the BETE HydroClaw’s internal geometry makes it a natural fit for large-particle and solids-heavy tank cleaning.

Instead of forcing material through a tight orifice, the HydroClaw uses an open, deflected-flow pathway that:

  • Reduces particle impact on critical surfaces.
  • Allows larger solids to pass without clogging.
  • Maintains a consistent spray pattern even in dirty fluids.

For tanks with heavy buildup, sediment, or abrasive residue, this makes a massive difference.

Why Choose BETE?

With decades of engineering expertise and a focus on solving complex spraying challenges, BETE continues to be a leader in industrial nozzle technology. The HydroClaw is a perfect example of that innovation—purpose-built for the harshest environments.

If your current nozzles can’t keep up, or if your maintenance team is constantly pulling and replacing failed components, it may be time to upgrade to a solution designed for the real world.

The BETE HydroClaw® isn’t a standard nozzle—it’s a strategic investment in efficiency, uptime, and long-term system reliability. For operations dealing with abrasive, particulate-heavy fluids, it delivers performance where it counts most.

If you’d like to explore whether the BETE HydroClaw® is the right fit for your tank cleaning application, reach out to an EXAIR Application Engineer at techelp@exair.com. They can help review your system, recommend the best approach, and ensure you’re choosing the most efficient and durable solution for your process.

Jordan Shouse, CCASS

Application Engineer

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BETE’s Foam-Busting Nozzles: Spraying Suds into Submission with Industrial Swagger

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

When I hear foam, the first thing that comes to mind is my salt water fish tank and the protein skimmer below it doing the dirty work of pulling all the fish waste from the water colum. In this case, the foam is good. It operates on the principle of air-water interaction and the hydrophobic nature of organic compounds. Air is pushed into the water, creating tiny bubbles. All those tiny bubbles provide a large surface area for the organic molecules to adhere to them. The bubbles rise to the top with those molecules and are collected into a cup at the top of the skimmer. Check out the photo below.

Saltwater Skimmer

This is a purpose-built foam generating process that is a huge benefit for every saltwater reef tank.

However, the same thing can happen during industrial processes and, in most cases, becomes a problem to fix rather than a benefit. Foam is undesirable because it can overflow vessels, create slippery and unsafe working conditions, interfere with processing, damage materials, and cause tanks to drain and dry slowly. Controlling foam can be accomplished by spraying liquid onto the pool, vessel, or reservoir’s surface, and allowing the spray’s droplets to impact the foam bubbles, causing them to break.

While breaking this foam sounds easy, “Just spray some water on it” in the process, it can be a challenge to get the correct size of droplets to break the foam. Droplets that are too small often cannot pop the bubbles, and if the droplets are too large they can break through them and create more agitation which creates more foam. You want a sweet spot where they are large enough to pop the foam bubbles while small enough to not create more foam.

Here is a real customer case, where BETE Application Engineers were able to assist the customer with an array of MaxiPass nozzles to knock foam down in a wastewater tank.

Industry: Petroleum Processing
Application: Foam Control
Product Description: MP Nozzle Array

Situation: A customer had processed condensate wastewater in a petroleum processing facility. The wastewater was in a square tank that measured 10’ x 11’ by 9’ (3 m x 3.4 m x 2.7 m) deep.
As the wastewater entered the tank, foam was generated, which was undesirable in this process. The customer had about 25 gpm (94.6 L/min) available to use to control the foam. In
In addition, the customer was looking for a turnkey system that could be installed as soon as it
arrived on site.

BETE’s solution: BETE Applications Engineers first determined that a 3 x 3 array of BETE
MP187M nozzles operating at 10 PSI (0.69 bar) would give the desired flow of 25 gpm total and
knock down the foam that was being generated. The next step was to review the customer’s piping
specifications in order to come up with both a nozzle header design and a feed header design.
Using one feed header and three nozzle headers, the customer simply had to bolt and gasket the
flanges, hook the inlet up to a water source, and they will be ready to go!

Whether you’re looking to optimize your industrial processes, improve efficiency, or tackle specific application challenges, the right liquid nozzle or compressed air product can make all the difference. EXAIR and BETE offer industry-leading solutions designed to meet your unique needs with precision and reliability. From air-atomizing nozzles to liquid-only nozzles, our innovative products deliver top performance across a wide range of industries. Ready to take your operations to the next level? Reach out to EXAIR or BETE today to find the perfect solution for your application!

Jordan Shouse, CCASS

Application Engineer

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Protein Skimmer photo courtesy of Stacina via Flickr Creative Commons License

Application Spotlight! – BETE TurboMix Eductor Mixing Nozzles

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

Application Spotlights have been something I’ve been doing for the better part of a year now. In these sessions, I draw from numerous phone calls and emails to guide you through the process our Application Engineering team uses to choose a product for a particular application! Today is especially exciting, as it features a BETE product, the 3/4TM150@7, ¾” MNPT, 316 ST.ST TurboMix.

The customer had a tank measuring 9 feet in diameter and 22 feet in height, containing approximately 10,000 gallons of water with suspended metal solids. They were relying on a 270 GPM inflow and outflow to generate sufficient movement to maintain the suspension of the metal solids. However, this method proved inadequate for achieving complete and proper mixing within the tank, prompting them to reach out to us. This scenario is a well-established application for the BETE TurboMix nozzles. Let’s jump into the technical side to see what we specified for this application.

To agitate liquids with suspended solids, we want to position the TurboMix at the bottom of one side of the tank and direct the plume upward toward the opposite side of the tank, aiming at the highest liquid level. To sweep solids along the tank bottom, direct the TurboMix plume upward at a 10º angle, using enough units to cover the bottom surface completely. (See the photo below) For some applications, directing the plume toward the pump inlet is useful.

We usually calculate based on turnover per hour. 3 or so is typical for general circulation; 5-6 is often more typical of blending operations. Being they wanted to have the ability to turn the mixing on and off, we calculated for the middle of the road at 5 times per hour, so the total required flow for mixing would be 872.5 GPM. Based on that, we recommend eight of our 3/4TM150@7, ¾” MNPT, 316 ST.ST. TurboMix Eductors.  Four on the 0-10* side of the half-moon and four on the 45-80* side.

At 30 PSI, each nozzle will be flowing 25.7 GPM, meaning the design pump flow required would be 205.9 GPM.  The design pump flow does not take into account the plumbing.

Whether you’re looking to optimize your industrial processes, improve efficiency, or tackle specific application challenges, the right liquid nozzle or compressed air product can make all the difference. EXAIR and BETE offer industry-leading solutions designed to meet your unique needs with precision and reliability. From atomizing nozzles to air amplifiers, their innovative products deliver top performance across a wide range of industries. Ready to take your operations to the next level? Reach out to EXAIR or BETE today to find the perfect solution for your application!

Jordan Shouse, CCASS

Application Engineer

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