Texas Dry Ice Blasting

Dry Ice Blasting…. What is it?

Dry ice-blasting is a form of cleaning where dry ice -- the solid form of carbon dioxide -- is accelerated in a pressurized air stream and directed at a surface in order to clean it. The method is similar to other forms of abrasive blasting such as sand blasting, plastic bead blasting, or soda-blasting but dry ice is substituted as the blasting medium.

Dry-ice blasting involves propelling pellets at extremely high speeds. The actual dry-ice pellets are quite soft, and much less dense than other media used in blast-cleaning, but upon impact, the pellet sublimates almost immediately, transferring minimal kinetic energy to the surface on impact and producing minimal abrasion.

However, since the sublimation process absorbs a large volume of heat from the surface. This is assumed to improve cleaning as the top layer of dirt or contaminant is expected to transfer more heat than the underlying substrate and flake off more easily.

Why choose dry ice blasting?

Reduces Disassembling/Reassembling time: Since Dry Ice Blasting is non-abrasive, non-conductive and non-flammable, Dry-ice blasting can be used to clean some equipment without disassembly and without producing fire or electrical hazards.

Improved Cleaning: The sublimation process absorbs a large volume of heat from the surface, which improves cleaning because the top layer of dirt or contaminant transfers more heat than the underlying substrate and thus flakes off more easily.The rapid change in state from solid-to-gas also causes microscopic shock waves, which also assist in removing the contaminant.

Decontaminates: Dry ice blasting may also be used to clean and effectively decontaminate surfaces of food processing equipment by ridding them of microorganisms such as Salmonella enteritidis, E. coli, and Listeria monocytogenes, which are not detectable using conventional microbiological methods.

Environmentally-friendly Clean-up

The EPA actually recommends dry ice blasting as an alternative to many types of solvent-based cleaning since dry-ice blasting leaves no chemical residue. This is because the dry ice sublimates at room temperature.

Dry ice blasting can clean numerous objects with differing, complex geometries at once. In fact, due to the blast media sublimating without residue, dry ice blasting has been found to be useful in the semiconductor and aerospace industries.

In addition, compared to other blasting-cleaning methods, dry ice blasting produces fewer waste products and does not require clean-up of a blasting medium. The waste products can be swept up, vacuumed or washed away depending on the containment.

Note: The efficiency and effectiveness of this process depends on the thermal conductivity of the substrate and contaminant.