Overcoming Summer Dry Ice Blasting Problems

As you might expect, summer weather and dry ice blasting don’t mix very well: hot summer conditions here in Buffalo and Rochester can make it difficult to protect the integrity of your dry ice supply, not to mention keeping cool the air needed to cleanly propel the dry ice chips during the blasting process.

To make matters worse, many manufacturers of dry ice blasting machines don’t give you much guidance when it comes to dry ice blasting in hot weather – the only specs they typically address in their literature are inlet temperature and dew point of the blast pressure air.

But here at Irish Carbonic, we’re all about the helping our dry ice customers (or even people who might one day become Irish Carbonic dry ice customers). So we’ve put together a list of seven tips to consider if you’re faced with a dry ice blasting task during hot weather.

Seven dry ice blasting tips for hot weather

1. Keep insulated containers closed and wrapped until you are ready to use them.
2. Avoid placing dry ice containers in direct sunlight.
3. Cover the insulated containers with a blanket for further sun protection and an extra measure of insulation.
4. Once you open the insulated dry ice containers, restore all the packing materials (including the plastic liner and cardboard topper) before re-closing the lid.
5. Consider staggering your dry ice deliveries during periods of extreme heating rather than getting the full delivery at once.
6. Install a permanently fixed or portable aftercooler dryer to your plant air system between the air source and the inlet of the dry ice blasting machine; the aftercooler will drop the air temperature enough to encourage moisture condensation in the heat exchanger, which will then be pulled out of the air stream by the water separator.
7. Install a coalescing filter after the water separator to remove any aerosolized oils and other contaminates not removed from the air stream by the water separator. This will help you avoid freeze ups in your dry ice blasting machine’s dosing mechanism.

Need dry ice for your ice-blasting project? Contact the dry ice pros at Irish Carbonic today for your next dry ice delivery!