Dry Ice Blasting can save thousands of pounds in the wind turbine industry
Optimum have just completed another new and very successful project, this time in the wind power industry.
Wind power isn’t an industry we targeted as such, in fact it came to us! We were asked, by a company who owns a small wind farm in Yorkshire, if we thought dry ice blasting would be a safe process to clean the yaw drive and gear box of a wind turbine, without having to dismantle the machinery. Traditionally the parts are taken out of the turbine, dismantled into smaller units and cleaned by hand.
The process is slow and with over 20 items to cleaned, and a team of 8 people, the traditional method isn’t a very cost effective process.
We assured the company that our process was completely safe to blast over such machinery without damaging the electrical components.
The blast was a complete success. The task was completed in half the time with just a 1 man crew.
The table below shows the savings that will now be made by introducing Dry Ice Blasting as part of the cleaning procedure for these wind turbines.
| Item | Current Method | Dr Ice Blasting |
| Cleaning time per item (minutes) | 60 | 30 |
| Dry ice consumption -kg per hour | 45 | |
| Compressor usage – litre per hour | 5.8 | |
| Chemicals/water used – Litre per cleaning | 92 | |
| Man power – number of staff required for cleaning | 8 | 1 |
| Quantity of items to be cleaned | 23 | |
| Number of cleanings per year | 4 | |
| Costings/Consumption £ | ||
| Dry Ice per kg | 0.68 | |
| Diesel cost per Litre | 1.08 | |
| Chemicals/water per Litre | 0.53 | |
| Labour costs per hour | 23 | |
| Value of production per hour | 1500 | |
| Cost of Cleaning £ | ||
| Labour costs | 184.00 | 11.50 |
| Cost of Dry Ice | 15.30 | |
| Cost of Diesel | 3.36 | |
| Cost of chemicals/water | 2.79 |
|
| Total cleaning costs per item | £186.79 | £30.16 |
| Down time costs (total) | 34500.00 | 17250.00 |
| Waste disposal (total) | 78.00 | 39.00 |
| Total costs per cleaning | £38,874.17 | £17,982.68 |
| Savings Per Cleaning Job £ | £20,891.49 | |
| Savings per year £ | £83,565.96 | |