dry ice cleaning

What is Dry Ice Blasting?

Dry ice blasting is a revolutionary blasting method that uses small, compact dry ice pellets as the blasting material. The dry ice pellets are accelerated in a jet of compressed air similar to that used in traditional blasting methods.

Dry ice blasting is designed to replace high-pressure hosing and other traditional blasting methods that use materials such as sand, glass and plastic as abrasive agents. In addition, however, a wide range of other cleaning methods that involve the use of hazardous chemicals, solvents, etc., can with advantage be replaced by dry ice blasting.

The unique feature of dry ice as a blasting material is that it
vaporises on contact with the surface to be cleaned. Treated
surfaces are therefore left dry and clean, without residues of detergents or blasting materials. As the process is completely
dry and non-conductive, dry ice blasting can be used where other methods are unsuitable. For example, electric motors and
equipment with electric, pneumatic or hydraulic components
can be cleaned direct using dry ice blasting.

The system produces no waste products. Only the coating that has been removed remains to be disposed of, and this can usually be swept or vacuumed from the floor beneath the treated object.

Dry ice blasting is ideal for removing coatings such as adhesives, varnish, oil, grease, coal dust, soot, mould release agents and bitumen - to name but a few of the materials we remove daily using the process.

Dry ice blasting will often allow a company's production equipment to be cleaned while in operation without the need for dismantling and costly downtime.

Dry ice blasting is non-abrasive, and surfaces are therefore treated gently. The system can thus be used on easily-damaged surfaces like nickel, chromium and soft aluminium.

The process is dry, and no waste materials are produced. This means that cleaning can be carried out even during short production shutdowns.

We have boats dry ice blasted, also soda blasting is quite common now.

Kim,
I know Queensland rail use it to clean the electrical component's in their locos.

I know they trialed it at the mine I work at, it did a very good job, but they never got them back as they charged the earth.

Have a good one

sounds like an ad to me

owen

K & DD,

We trialled dry ice blasting to clean Nylon, Hypalon & Polybutadine roller covers on a laminating machine that made ROAR wipers at the place where I used to work about ten years ago.

It resulted in one roller cover (Nylon) exploding & damage to the others as the dry ice spot froze the material which then eroded off.

The tech' that was running the trial packed his stuff up & dissapeared rather quickly & quietly.

It was extremely expensive for the cleaning process, & cost us about $10,000 in damage to the rollers being cleaned!

I don't think that I would use it to clean my bikes or cars!

Gday Kim,
When I first read "dry ice cleaning", I thought "Silly old fool, hes had too many reds and dropped his block of dry ice in the dirt"
I was going to suggest you put it in an air tight container with some water and shake it for a while???

LOL

Cheers
Hairy

I use this process regularly to clean our production equipment. We use hot melt glue systems in the manufacture of our product and there is a lot of charred, blackened surfaces on steel and aluminium, it works very well. Expensive at about $300 per hour but very very effective.

Thanks everyone for your input

I’ll print this thread out tomorrow and give it to my mate. From what I’m told it’s going to cost him $40,000+ for the equipment.

The thing I admire about this site is the depth of experience people have, and the good it does in decision making.

Regards

Kim