There is barely any industry which does not have the need of cleaning equipment, products or infrastructure.
Whilst there are a variety of options to do the cleaning many of those have disadvantages. Aqueous cleaning can leave moisture behind and often needs after treatment of water containing detergent and the removed contaminants. Cleaning with solvents leads to emission of volatile organic compounds. Dry abrasive blasting might be too aggressive for the given cleaning challenge. Associated dust creation is harmful to health and waste disposal can turn out to be costly.
CRYOCLEAN ® is an attractive and established alternative to traditional cleaning methods. CO2 cleaning uses solid carbon dioxide, also known as dry ice, as cleaning agent. Similar to sand blasting dry ice particles are propelled by compressed air and shot on the contaminated surface.
The cleaning effect of dry ice is based on a combination of embrittlement and cracking of the contaminant, kinetic impulse and a gas jet resulting from the explosive sublimation of dry ice upon impact.
Other than any other cleaning method CO2 cleaning avoids or considerable reduces the use of cleaning agent which has to be disposed afterwards. It works without solvents, does not leave any moisture behind which often allows in-situ cleaning of equipment and environmentally friendly manner.
Linde offers a range of CRYOCLEAN® alternatives suitable for different cleaning tasks. CRYOCLEAN® pellet cleaning works with pre-produced grain sized particles and is predominantly used for manual cleaning of equipment and tools. CRYOCLEAN® snow is an innovative technology for cleaning and pre-treating surfaces prior to painting and coating using tiny dry ice particles create by pressurised liquid CO2. This is ideal for the integration into a fully automated production process. CRYOCLEAN® snow+ combines the strengths of dry ice and abrasives for manual cleaning during production.