Dry Ice Blasting: Best In Chicago Mold Removal!

What Is Dry Ice Blasting

Dry ice blasting is known by several names: dry ice blasting, dry ice cleaning, CO2 blasting, dry ice dusting, and even environmentally sustainable cleaning. Cold Jet dry ice blasting is an efficient and cost-effective way for industries to maximize production capability and quality.

Dry ice blasting is similar to sand blasting, plastic bead blasting or soda blasting where media is accelerated in a pressurized air stream to impact a surface to be cleaned or prepared.

Dry Ice Blasting Method

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 (i.e. sand or plastic pellets). Upon impact, the pellet sublimates almost immediately, transferring minimal kinetic energy to the surface on impact and producing minimal abrasion. The sublimation process absorbs a large volume of heat from the surface, producing shear stresses due to thermal shock.

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

The rapid change in state from solid to gas also causes microscopic shock waves, which are also thought to assist in removing the contaminant. Dry Ice Blasting is nonabrasive, nonconductive and nonflammable. Dry Ice Blasting generates no additional waste or secondary contamination unlike media and water blasting.

Dry Ice Blasting Benefits

Cold Jet dry ice blasting uses compressed air to accelerate frozen carbon dioxide (CO2) “dry ice” pellets to a high velocity. A compressed air supply of 80 PSI/50 scfm can be used in this process. Dry ice pellets can be made on-site or supplied. Pellets are made from food grade carbon dioxide that has been specifically approved by the FDA, EPA and USDA.

Dry ice blasting has many unique and superior benefits over traditional blasting media.

• Non-abrasive, nonflammable and nonconductive cleaning method.
• Environmentally responsible and contains no secondary contaminants such as solvents or grit media.
• Clean and approved for use in the food industry.
• Allows most items to be cleaned in place without time-consuming disassembly.
• Can be used without damaging active electrical or mechanical parts or creating fire hazards.
• Can be used to remove production residue, release agents, contaminants, paints, oils and biofilms.
• Can be as gentle as dusting smoke damage from books or as aggressive as removing weld slag from tooling.
• Can be used for many general cleaning applications.