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Key aspects of the process

The process of cleaning with dry ice pellets is similar to the process of cleaning with sand, plastic balls or soda where compressed air (or other inert gas) causes the particles acceleration for impact with surface which requires cleaning. Parcticles impacting the surface during dry ice cleaning are the hard pellets of carbon dioxide.

The unique character of this method is that the dry ice pellets sublimate (gasify) at the moment they impact the surface. Energy release at the moment of impact and extremely fast heat transfer between the surface and pellets cuase instaneous CO2 sublimation. In milliseconds gas expands approximately 800 times against the pellets volume which is properly the „microexplosion“ at the impact point. Thanks to CO2 evaporation, the process of dry ice cleaning doesn’t leave any secondary waste.

The same as in other alternative methods of spot blasting, momentum energy of dry ice diffusion depends on mass density and speed of pellets at the moment of impact. To get the necessary energy of impact the lower hardness of pellets is to be refilled due pellets velocity increase. The pellets speed-up is the result of hypersonic speed of air flow.