Characterization of CO₂ Snow Generation to Increase the Blasting Performance

Abstract

Chemical cleaning methods are under strict restrictions due to the legislator, as they are often harmful to environment and health. Therefore, environmentally neutral cleaning methods will gain importance in the future. Alternative cleaning processes like blasting with solid carbon dioxide can substitute such harmful chemicals without residues of blasting media. CO2 snow blasting has a minor technical complexity with a possible high degree of automation, but is limited in its cleaning performance. Basic knowledge of CO2 formation must be gained in order to increase the cleaning performance. The basic dependencies of ambient pressure and temperature as well as the possibility of their manipulation regarding the produced CO2 particles were investigated. The investigations were conducted using design of experiments and lead to a model describing the CO2 snow formation and its properties. The goal was to manipulate the properties of the generated CO2 snow in order to optimise the technology regarding the cleaning task.