What is dry ice blasting?

2/3/2016 (Permalink)

Dry ice blasting is a revolutionary blasting method that uses dry ice pellets (CO2 in solid form) as the blasting material. The process is very enviromentally friendly and provides a fast and effective alternative to traditional methods of cleaning industrial prouction equipment.

Dry ice blasting is a 3 step process:

- Kinetic- when dry ice pellets are accelerated in jet of compressed air and strike a surface at the speed of sound, they crack and loosen the coating of the surface being treated.

- Thermal- The low temperature of dry ice pellets (-79C/-100F) makes the coating brittle, cracks it and loosens it. This allows dry ice to permeate the coating.

- Sublimation- dry ice penetrates the coating and immediately sublimes (passes directly from solid to vapor state) This results in 700- fold increase in volume, an explosive effect that lifts the coating off the surface.