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. It 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 CRYOCLEAN® avoids or considerable reduces the use of cleaning agent which has to be disposed afterwards. It works without solvents and does not leave any moisture behind which often allows in-situ cleaning of equipment.
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 cleaning is mainly used as an upstream or downstream process step on fully automated serial production of products. CRYOCLEAN® snow+ combines the strengths of dry ice and abrasives for manual cleaning during production.