The Benefits of Dry Ice Blasting

What is Dry Ice Blasting?

Dry ice blasting has as many names as it does uses and benefits. It may also be referred as dry ice cleaning, dry ice dusting, CO2 blasting, and even environmentally sustainable cleaning. Dry ice blasting is a productive and cost effective solution for industries to maximize production capacity and quality. Dry ice blasting is similar to plastic bead blasting and sand blasting in the sense that a media is accelerated in a pressurized air stream impacting the surface to be cleaned. However the similarity ends here. Dry ice blasting uses soft dry ice that is accelerated to supersonic speeds to penetrate and remove undesirable contaminants. Whereas sand and plastic bead blasting utilize hard and abrasive materials that in turn not only remove the contaminant but often damage the underlying surface.

What are the Benefits of Dry Ice Blasting?

Dry Ice blasting is non-flammable, non-abrasice, non-conductive, and environmentally friendly. Dry ice blasting does not present secondary contaminants and permits cleaning in place without disassembly of equipment which reduces the amount of down time. Dry ice blasting can be used to clean food processing equipment that decomtaminates surfaces of Salmonella enteritidis, E. coli and Listeria monocytogenes. Dry ice blasting can be utilized for the removal of production residue, asphalt tar, resins, release agents, contaminants, paints, oils, and biofilms. The EPA recommends dry ice blasting as an alternative to other types of solvent-based cleaning. The FDA, EPA and USDA has approved dry ice blasting for industry applications.

Industry Applications

The utilization of dry ice cleaning will reduce cleaning costs, labor costs, and down time for maintenance and cleaning. Dry ice cleaning results in no secondary waste and offers the ability to clean surfaces in place without disassembly.