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English10 Reasons Why You Should Use Dry Ice Blasting
Tired of harsh chemicals, abrasive media, and endless scrubbing to tackle tough cleaning jobs? Dry ice blasting is a cleaning method gaining traction across industries, offering a powerful yet surprisingly gentle solution. This technique uses recycled solid carbon dioxide to remove dirt, coatings, and contaminants. It leaves a clean surface without creating extra waste or causing damage like traditional cleaning methods. Intrigued? Get ready as we explore the top 10 reasons why dry ice blasting could change your cleaning process for the better.
1. Superior clean with dry ice
When it comes to achieving a truly superior clean, dry ice blasting often outshines traditional methods. Unlike scrubbing, harsh chemicals, or even abrasive blasting that can be ineffective, time-consuming, and potentially damaging, dry ice blasting offers a more efficient and gentle approach.
By quickly and effectively removing contaminants from equipment and machinery without the need for extensive disassembly, businesses can significantly reduce downtime and increase production. This not only allows for more frequent preventative maintenance and spot cleaning but also contributes to improved product quality by ensuring equipment remains free of build-up that can cause defects.
Ultimately, dry ice blasting provides a deeper, faster, and often safer clean, making it a powerful alternative for industrial cleaning needs.
2. Clean-in-place with dry ice blasting
Imagine cleaning your equipment without having to shut it down, cool it down, or take it apart. That's the power of dry ice blasting. This efficient method allows for online cleaning, eliminating the downtime associated with traditional disassembly and reassembly. Because dry ice blasting leaves behind no secondary waste, residue, or moisture, you can clean directly where the equipment operates. This significantly speeds up the cleaning process, leading to increased production time and overall efficiency for your facility.
3. Non-abrasive industrial cleaning process
Dry ice is a very soft media and can clean most surfaces without damaging them. It is around 1.5 – 2 on the Mohs Scale of Hardness (see below). Dry ice can clean sensitive surfaces, such as electronic equipment, printed circuit boards, and plastic molds, without etching, profiling, or changing surface dimensions. This prolongs the life of the equipment and decreases the risk of damage to machinery during the cleaning process.
Operators of dry ice blasting machines can further control the aggression of dry ice by changing the particle size and the velocity of the dry ice exiting the system. Smaller particles, combined with lower acceleration equates to a gentler clean.
4. Increased efficiency for industrial cleaning
Dry ice blasting reduces the time, labor, and resources needed for cleaning projects and allows facilities to allocate their resources more efficiently.
Manual cleaning processes that require abrasive tools, such as chisels and scrapers, or harmful chemicals are tedious, time-consuming, and require multiple people to be allocated to the cleaning project. Operators often need to wait for equipment to cool down before they can begin the cleaning process and need to disassemble machinery to reach tight spaces.
Dry ice blasting allows facilities to clean quicker and easier, with only one person needed to perform the cleaning.
5. No secondary waste with dry ice cleaning
The dry ice-cleaning process does not generate secondary waste. Dry ice sublimates (returns to gaseous state) upon impact with the surface being cleaned, resulting in no secondary waste, residue, or moisture introduced. This eliminates extra cleanup, disposal of secondary waste streams, and additional cleaning preparation, such as masking delicate sensors or wrapping electronic components before cleaning. Eliminating secondary waste allows equipment to be cleaned while online and still operating.
When using solid grit media or water for cleaning hazardous materials, the cleaning media also becomes hazardous, requiring special handling, disposal and regulatory reporting.
6. Environmentally responsible cleaning process
Dry ice cleaning is an environmentally friendly cleaning solution. The dry ice used in the dry ice cleaning process is made of reclaimed CO2. This CO2 is created as a byproduct of other industrial processes and is then collected and recycled. Dry ice blasting does not produce CO2 or add additional CO2 to the atmosphere and, therefore, does not contribute to the greenhouse effect.
Dry ice is also an approved medium by the EPA, USDA, and FDA. It is non-toxic, non-hazardous, and is approved for use around food. Dry ice is colorless, tasteless, odorless, and eco-friendly.
Whether you need a dry clean, are trying to reduce the amount of water or chemicals used, or are trying to enhance sanitation or cross-contamination prevention programs, dry ice blasting provides the environmentally sustainable answer.
7. Enhanced operator safety with dry ice blasting
Dry ice blasting is a preferred cleaning method for employees who perform the cleaning. Methods, such as manual cleaning, can be tedious and back-breaking work. Dry ice cleaning eliminates the need to scrape and scrub the contaminated areas manually.
Other methods that use toxic materials, such as sandblasting and chemical cleaning, can harm the employee and the surrounding area.
Dry ice cleaning is non-toxic and eliminates the need for chemical cleaning solutions.
8. Access and clean tight spaces with dry ice cleaning
9. Faster clean with dry ice
Dry ice blasting will provide a faster cleaning than alternative methods in most cleaning applications. When the time and resources dedicated to waste containment and collection are considered, these cleaning methods can consume many more hours than dry ice cleaning.
Dry ice blasting also achieves time savings by allowing for equipment to be cleaned online and still at operating temperature. This reduces the time associated with allowing the machinery to cool down, disassembling, moving the machinery to an area to be cleaned, and then reassembling.
10. A variety of industrial cleaning applications
From oil rigs to bakery equipment, dry ice blasting provides a faster and more effective cleaning solution in any manufacturing environment. Click here to see all the industries that benefit from dry ice blasting.
Dry ice cleaning systems can help many types of facilities support quality, service, and productivity goals while also meeting industry and government regulatory standards.
For more information on the benefits of dry ice blasting and blasting applications, visit our dry ice blasting page or contact us for more information!
