Dry Ice Blasting Expained
Dry Ice Blasting is a relatively new cleaning process, used
primarily in industrial cleaning applications. It is an
environmentally friendly process that can clean a wide variety of
components very effectively without the use of chemicals or
abrasion. It does this by using small pellets of solid carbon
dioxide (commonly known as dry ice) propelled by compressed air at
high velocity (492 ft/s) through a hand held lance to impact and
clean the surface quickly and thoroughly.
 Dry ice is made by liquefying CO� (carbon
dioxide) under pressure and then allowing it to expand rapidly. In
this process part of the CO� evaporates and thus cools the remainder
to such an extent that it
freezes and creates CO� snow at a
temperature of -110�F. Dry ice
pellets with a diameter of
3 mm are obtained by pressing the CO� snow through an appropriate
die and then be loaded into insulated containers for transportation
to site ready for use.
The dry ice blasting process is superior to blasting with sand or
glass bead and other types of industrial cleaning methods for a
number of reasons, not least because there is no residue left after
cleaning as the pellets sublimate (convert directly from solid
pellet to a vapour (CO�) leaving only the product that has been
removed from the cleaned surface to recycle or dispose of - no
water, no chemicals or grit.
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