Qualitative Comparison of Dry Ice Blasting and other methods
Safety
Traditional: Chemical as well as abrasive media have safety concerns for workers and customers. These risks do not alway go away when the work is stopped. Hazards such as chemical contact and abrasive dust can pose health hazards if mitigation procedures are not properly followed.
Dry Ice Blasting: Dry Ice blasting have very few risks. Compressed air and cold temps of dry ice are the only major risks and are easily controlled. After an area or piece of equipment has been cleaned there are no lingering risks; the carbon dioxide has sublimated and there have been no secondary waste created.
Verdict: Dry Ice Blasting is the exact service you need if your priorities are for the safety of your Workers and the Environment. Dry Ice Blasting dramatically reduces safety and health risks for employees as well as other workers in the area. Not needing expensive and cumbersome solutions for keeping workers safe reduces cost, increases flexibility for locations of work and also reduces time for deployment.
Equipment Downtime
Text..
.Traditional: Cleaned in dedicated cleaning area with dissasemble required.
Dry Ice Blasting: Equipment cleaned in place and with little or no dissasembly.
Verdict: Dry Ice Blasting, when taking overall project cost/time into consideration, is vastly superior to other cleaning methods. Cleaning electrical windings without baking the equipment for days after is such a game changer that media cost is outweighed by the turnaround time, labour savings and process simplification.
Hazardous Waste Creation and Disposal
Traditional: Media or agent used to clean substrate becomes secondary waste stream that must be contained or disposed of, not only adding to the cost, but increasing the customer ecological footprint.
Dry Ice Blasting: Dry Ice is inert and sublimates on contact with the surface to be cleaned. These properties allow us to create no additional waste. The only waste to be disposed of or contained is what is present.
Verdict: The of a secondary waste stream, as well as using increasingly scarce/valuable recources (water) are making traditional methods not just unviable but also undesireable. Facilities that spend countless amounts of money and man hours to reduce their environmental impact do not want to negate all that investment by using outdated and damaging cleaning methods.
Equipment Reliability
Traditional: Abrasion, grit contamination, moisture intrusion and the handling of the equipment are risks inherent in traditional maintenance methods.
Dry Ice Blasting: Apart from the main advantage of Dry Ice (non-abrasive), the benefits of this process are that you are not introducing foreign material into the equipment cavities, seals and bearings, preventing damage.
Vedict: Dry ice blasting once again stands head and shoulders ahead of other cleaning methods in this area. Dry Ice blasting is non-abrasive, meaning that that old compressor with fits that your millwrights have stoned for decades will not lose any more material when removing gaskets.