Abstract
Dry ice blasting is a highly efficient and environmental friendly method for elimination of undesired layers from various materials. Dry ice blasting is used especially in cleaning of industrial manufacturing moulds, welding robots, and many other industrial applications where water cleaning cannot be used and/or savings of detergents are required. HVAC systems are currently very promising area of application. In contrast with mechanical cleaning, dry ice blasting technology requires a source of compressed air which supplies kinetic energy to pellets of dry ice. Kinetic energy of air-pellets mixture is a key factor influencing the efficiency of the cleaning process. Production of sufficient amount of compressed air with desiredproperties (0.6 MPa, 5 Nm3/min) is, however, a highly energy intensive process and rather expensive, too.
Central distribution of compressed air with these properties is commonly not available in industrial facilities.
This paper presents an innovation of blasting machine with dry ice shaving mechanism that has not yet been published. Development phase focused on decrease of compressed air consumption which is used to power dry ice shaving mechanism. This consumption at current blasting machines may reach up to 25 % of total compressed air consumption. Standard pneumatic drive of the shaving mechanism was innovatively replaced with electric drive. This new arrangement allows for significant reduction in consumption of compressed air, as proved by our measurements. Considerable increase in total performance of the blasting machine and operation productivity is the main benefit of the new innovation. This may also be applied in facilities where insufficient flow of compressed air had prevented its application.
Successful experimental measurements in a research facility were followed by recommendations of testing the innovated machine in industrial scale. Our experience proves that the innovation has a great potential in industry. Widespread use is, however, conditioned by user-friendly handling and control system. The control system is the subject of the last chapter of this paper.
