Dry Ice Blasting….. a Boon for the Food Industry

Everyday food industry deals with the challenge of maintaining hygiene standards and cleanliness. The equipment utilized in this industry needs to be perfectly clean in order to maximize the production capacity and to reduce the chances of accidents occurring due to poor maintenance.

Cleaning methods like wire brushes, sand blasting, solvents and high pressure are considered ancient now. The new age method of cleaning called dry ice blasting is the order of the day. Since it uses harmless dry ice pellets, it is preferred by many in food and beverage industry.

Let’s discuss in detail why dry ice cleaning is superior to other methods.

Reaches every nook and corner

In this process, dry ice pellets can get to the parts of equipments which are difficult to reach. In other methods, you cannot even dream of accessing such areas. Since dry ice pellets manage to reach every nook and corner of the equipments; it cleans more deeply and effectively. CO2 blasting efficiently removes adhesive, carbon build-up, grease, paper dust, and glue from various equipments such as:

Conveyors
Ovens
Chocolate Moulds
Filters
Mixing equipments
Slicing equipments
Frying and Processing equipments
Bread and Pastry equipments
Waffle Irons

On-site Dry Ice Cleaning

The best part of dry ice cleaning is that equipments are cleaned on the site itself. There is no headache of taking the machinery to some other place for cleaning.

Non-abrasive form of cleaning

While cleaning, other methods can damage the equipment to some extent but in dry ice cleaning, you can rest assured that nothing will happen to the equipment. It uses CO2 which sublimates and turns to gaseous state the moment it comes in contact with the surface.

Non-hazardous Cleaning

Though CO2 blasting is used for various industries such as printing, aerospace, automotive, packaging etc but for food and beverage industry, it is highly beneficial since it is completely non-toxic. Unlike other methods, it doesn’t make use of any chemicals, solvents, sanitizers or detergents. It uses harmless CO2 pellets.

No Usage of Water in CO2 blasting

The other reason why dry ice blasting is the ideal choice for food industry is that it doesn’t involve the use of water in its cleaning process. This is useful especially when the equipment are sensitive to water.

No Secondary Waste

The added advantage of dry ice cleaning is that it doesn’t generate any extra waste while cleaning. The only waste that gets generated is the one from the cleaning site itself.

Retards Bacterial Growth

Dry ice also destroys and retards the growth of fungus and bacteria such as salmonella and listeria, as it’s temperature is at -109 degrees F. At this temperature, all the bacteria and fungi present in the equipments get killed.

Reduces Cost

Dry ice blasting manages to reduce the overall cost as it eliminates the need to dispose of extra waste, transportation of equipments to other sites and reduces the production downtime and overall cleaning time.