Dry Ice Cleaning Wax Boilers
Optimum Dry Ice Blasting have recently seen a massive demand for the cleaning of wax boilers. Our aggressive yet non-abrasive process is excellent at removing 100% of the wax build up without damaging the surface it is bound onto.
Traditional methods of cleaning would involve hand scraping the surface, in itself an extremely tough, time consuming task. The problem with this cleaning method is the very nature of abrasively removing the wax will scratch a ‘key’ onto the substrate of the vessel. In turn, this causes the wax to bond more strongly to the boiler surface, making it more difficult to remove during future cleaning operations.
Dry ice cleaning de-bonds the wax build up from the surface by the process of kinetic impact, shrinking the contaminant with the sheer cold of dry ice before a rapid expansion of the Co2 dislodges the wax from the boiler surface. Dry ice blasting leaves the wax boiler surface clean and free of debris. More importantly there is zero risk of abrasion damage.
On a recent project for Rolls Royce Aerospace a time comparison was carried out. We saved the company 18-man hours of labour time and 8 hours of downtime/lost production on just 1 machine. A massive saving!
Is Dry Ice Blasting A New Process?
Dry Ice Cleaning for wax boilers isnt a new process. We have been using this method for over 8 years. However, insurance companies have driven the recent upturn through new directives. Many companies traditionally used angle grinders to remove wax. This created dust, increased labour time, and risked damage to the underlying surface. Operators considered the margin for error in this method to be too high. A grinder can strike, and therefore peen the metal barrel. This can then cause a catastrophic rupture while the vessel is under pressure. This is a risk that the insurers simply will not cover.
Dry ice blasting has been passed as the safest, quickest method to decontaminate a wax boiler by all the large insurance companies. If you need to know more, please click here to see some of our video footage of the process.