Dry Ice Blasting

Most traditional methods of cleaning require the aggresive use of abrasive cleaners and tools including wirebrushes and media blasting units. In today's world, people are looking for enviromentally friendly and non-aggressive cleanign methods.

What is Dry Ice Blasting?

Dry Ice is frozen carbon dioxide, a normal part of the Earth's atmosphere. Is the gas that is exhaled by mammals and absorbed by plants and trees. It is also the same gas commonly used when making soft drinks and soda waters.

Dry Ice in the past has been used in many fashions from freezing and keeping things frozen due to its extreme temperature. Dry Ice is used in a variety of functions and is simple to handle with the use of insulated gloves.

Dry Ice Blasting is similar to sand or soda blasting where a media (sand, soda or dry ice) is accelerated in a pressurized air stream to impact a surface to be cleaned. That is where the similarities stop. Instead of using sand or other abrasive media to grind the surface, dry ice blasting uses soft dry ice that sublimates (turns into a gaseous state) on impact. The dry ice pellets create mini explosions that lift the unwanted material from the underlying substrate.

Dry Ice Blasting is quickly establishing itself as the favoured method of mould remediation. It is superior to cleaning mould compared to traditional remediation techniques. Tradtitional methods usually only clean the surface where the mould is which in turn leaves the discoloration and possibility of spres being left behind.

When dry ice blasting is used, a microscopic layer of the material is removed that lies just under the mould. By removing that layer, dry ice blasting can remove as much as 99.999% of the mould spore from the surface. This method will also kill any organic contaminates that remain on the surface. Because dry ice cublimates on impact, there is no cleaning media to remove. Only the material that was removed.