Dry Ice Blasting Turbine cleaning 3

[Braxas]

I work at a plant that is always looking for new and innovative ways to make things work. With this in mind I come from a Military and Commercial aircraft background were we used Dry Ice Blasting to clean parts and aircraft engines. I suggested this as an alternative to cleaning our 3600 rpm turbines that we use in our production. These are not gas but mechanically spun using electrical motors. Has anyone out there used the Dry Ice Blasting method to clean parts or something of this type? Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[rhodie]

I think the answer to your question lies in what exactly you are attempting to clean off the parts.

For example, I think SPOP 700 is used on hot section parts. High carbon build, soot, etc... If you parts are not this "dirty" then I am sure there are a multiple handful of other cleaning methods that are less agressive with respect to base metals.

 

[rhodie]

You know, I should red-flag my own post. There should be no concern to base metals using a CO2 blast process. Somehow I had a specific example of part damage confused with the CO2 process I am familiar with, but after reviewing my notes of the subject this was not the case.

 

[plasgears]

We used ground up walnut shells to scrub the flowpath. CO2 troubles me because of possible thermal stress effects.

 

[Braxas]

We have tried Walnut shells in the past but the mess is not worth the efforts. Imagine this turbine as a Turbo charger on a car but split open at the casing to access the entire front of the impeller style blades. The casing has a drain hole in the bottom so liquid is not a problem unless it stays behind. Dry Ice due to it's very nature evaporates and leaves little residual mess. As far as the embrittlement issue I have addressed this before at Boeing and as long as you dont concentrate in one area for anything longer than a sweeping motion you are generally okay. It's always good to take breaks to allow the metal to not get to cold. I have never done this on this type of equipment but it should work just as well for this application but thats what I needed all of your help on to make the right decision on this. Thanks for the responses so far.

 

[jdbrandt77]

Dry Ice cleaning is used in the gravure printing industry. They use it to remove dried up ink/paint from the area below the ink pans where ink splashes out. Its noisy, but it sure works. I actually have a photograph of a guy doing this....

 

[Deon7]

cold jet company used to specialize in dry ice blasting. they were located in the cincinnati ohio area for years. we have built some costom equipment for them in the past. i do know that they were very active in parts cleaning/stripping with dry ice.

hope this helps if it doesnt i may be able to help in other ways just contact me at deon7@scott-randallsystems.com

best of luck
deon