Advancing sustainable and efficient industrial cleaning: CO2 snow jet blasting for residue-free surface cleaning

Through the increase in importance of environmental consciousness due to legislature and social awareness, efficient though sustainable manufacturing processes are gaining in popularity. CO2 snow jet blasting is a widely used technology for industrial cleaning and allows for sustainable cleaning in comparison to established traditional methods which often necessitate the use of water, chemicals or abrasive material leading to hazardous waste products. In contrast CO2 snow jet blasting is a dry and residue-free cleaning process. The presented investigations examine the efficacy of CO2 snow jet blasting in removing a reference contamination consisting of a mixture of grinding oil and abrasive borcarbide particles from 316L stainless steel and tungsten carbide surfaces. The influence of three process parameters was investigated, stand off distance s, jet angle α and traversing speed vf. The cleaning performance was evaluated based on residual filmic and particulate contamination.The results show the capability of CO2 snow jet blasting for industrial cleaning applications by removing of up to 99 % of contaminations.