People have become more and more concerned with the environment. This happened because we have come to realize that the actions of some may have unwanted effects on others. Since we live in an industrial world, people have been looking for alternative means of cleaning industrial equipment used to power our society, but also try to be as environmentally friendly as they can.



This is where dry ice blasting comes in. An efficient, relatively low cost, but highly friendly with the environment method used to clean the equipment of different plants and industrial corporations. But what does the dry ice blasting process involve?

Here's an example. Lots of people have cars. There comes a time when you get tired of the color of your car. What do you do then? You get it into a shop to get it repainted. If you assist the process you observe many stages the painting process involves. One of the early stages of repainting is removing the old paint, which is done with a machine that blasts something onto your car so the old paint is removed.

That material is often sand. It is blasted at high speed on the surface of your car so the paint is easily removed. It is a relatively simple process, but highly efficient. The dry ice blasting process works on the same principles, but it is used in other areas.

Dry ice is another name for solid carbon dioxide. This was not invented, it was discovered and observed by the French chemist Charles Thilorier in 1825. When he opened a cylinder containing liquid carbon dioxide, lots of the carbon dioxide evaporated. This resulted in a sedimentation of solid dry ice, a chemical compound which was observed and tested for the next 60 years or so.

Dry ice blasting uses dry ice the size of rice grains which are blasted onto the desired surface. The speeds these pellets reach are supersonic, which result in mini explosions. Therefore, the surfaces bombarded like this are cleaned or prepared for later purposes, because the top layers of undesired substances are completely removed from the substrate.

The dry ice blasting services use this material because it is chemically inert ? it does not react to other substances ?, nonflammable ? it does not catch fire ?, non-conductive ? electricity does not run through it ? and non-poisonous ? it is not harmful for people. I mentioned afore that the most important advantage of dry ice cleaning services is the lack of residues, because of the sublimation.

Sublimation is the process the dry ice is subdued to. There are three major phases any substance can be found in nature ? solid, liquid and gas. The most common transition in phases happens between solid-liquid and liquid-solid, or vice versa. Sublimation consists of skipping one process, turning from the solid phase to gas. This is the reason why there no residues left from dry ice blasting.