FCS, Inc. pays close attention to the type of buildup in industrial ovens. Most oven chamber cleaning is performed with dry ice blasting. Dry ice blasting provides several benefits over chemical striping and manual oven cleaning. They include:
Sublimation. Dry ice hits a target surface, usually a warmer surface, at high speed. The impact and temperature change makes the small dry ice pellets sublimate. The conversion of solid ice into a gas aids the cleaning process beyond simple media blasting with sand, beads, or other materials. The conversion process creates little explosions of expanding gas that lifts grime, paint, and stains as the media is applied.
Gentle. Dry ice blasting is hard on paint, grime, and other buildup, but it is very gentle on solid surfaces such as aluminum and steel. Dry ice does not create pits or otherwise mare the surface of these metals.
Sanitation. Dry ice blasting is an excellent way to sanitize. The sublimation process does more than remove grime. It is brutal on microorganisms. A properly trained and experienced dry ice blasting team will leave an oven's surface 99.9% clean of bacteria and other microorganisms.
Small footprint. Since dry ice sublimates into a gas, the only waste at a job site is the grime, buildup, and material that was being stripped from the surface. There is minimal residue. There are no piles of waste media that must be removed. Some projects only require a vacuum to clean-up.
Fast. Dry ice blasting strips most surfaces very fast. What may be an ‘all-hands’ week-long cleaning project for a scheduled facility downtime, may just take days with one or two dry ice blasting teams. This saves time while significantly reducing facility costs.
Chemical Free. Dry ice blasting completely avoids the use of chemicals. It is safer and easier to employ than muriatic acid, hydrochloric acid, and other harsh cleaning agents. In some situations, the dry ice blasting can even occur during normal operations.