About dry ice

Learn more about this great product!

If you have not had much experience with dry ice, Irish Carbonic is here to help!
We provide customized dry ice delivery and service to businesses in the Greater Rochester and Buffalo areas. Industries we serve include:

• brewing
• food service
• logistics and shipping
• medical
• restaurants

What is dry ice and how is it used?

Dry ice is the solid form of carbon dioxide (CO₂)—a gas that occurs naturally in the earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the gas that we exhale when we breathe, and that plants use in photosynthesis.

With a temperature of an incredible -109.3°F, dry ice does not melt like regular ice does. Instead, it transitions directly from solid to gas in a metamorphosis called sublimation.

Dry ice is widely used because it is simple to freeze and easy to handle using insulated gloves. Since it does not leave a liquid residue and is extremely cold, it is ideal for keeping items frozen.

Medical centers rely on dry ice for a variety of purposes, such as eliminating warts and preserving biological materials, vaccines, organs, blood cells, and tissue samples. Moreover, cryotherapy utilizes this innovative method for removing pre-cancerous lesions found on the skin surface—or cancer itself.

Dry ice has become the preferred solution for food storage and preparation in commercial kitchens, restaurants, and supermarkets due to how easy it makes it for these businesses to remain in strict compliance with food safety standards and regulations. Dry ice has remarkable germ-killing properties, meaning it’s the ideal solution for eliminating mildew and mold growth in places that handle food regularly. Dry ice serves as a preventative measure to ward off not only diseases caused by spoiled food but also allergic reactions. In restaurants and supermarkets, it is often used when displaying or storing food for extended periods of time to help preserve freshness.

Businesses rely on dry ice to ensure that their perishable goods remain in a safe temperature range during shipping, without the hassle of thawing and melting, as is common with traditional ice or gel packs.

Dry ice blast cleaning is an effective and environmentally friendly way to clean industrial equipment.

Interesting facts about dry ice

If you don’t have much experience with dry ice, here are some things to know about it:

• Unlike water, which transforms from a solid to a liquid when exposed to heat, dry ice passes directly into a vapor.
• As a result of sublimation, dry ice produces fog when exposed to air. This is genuine water vapor fog and not carbon dioxide vapor. The intense cold temperature of the gas condenses moisture in the atmosphere, causing this display of misty clouds.



• A French inventor named Adrien-Jean-Pierre Thilorier was the first to observe dry ice when in 1835 he noticed that opening a container of liquid carbon dioxide left behind a solid form that evaporated instead of melting. In 1924, Thomas B. Slate filed for a United States patent for the method of making it and DryIce Corporation of America later officially trademarked this amazing substance as “Dry Ice.”
• Dry ice is denser than water, which means that it sinks in water, and its density grows as the temperature decreases: from 1.55 g/cm₃ to 1.7 g/cm₃.
• Crafted as a by-product of other industrial processes, dry ice is a colorless and odorless substance that can be collected and recycled. Its eco-friendly nature makes it ideal for use in dry ice-blasting machines, where its impact on the environment will be minimal — with no contribution to the greenhouse effect or global warming! Dry ice has been approved by the EPA, the USDA, and the FDA thanks to its nontoxic composition, making it viable for use near food too.

Dry ice basics