Pressure Wash News Winter issue

quicker and also more complete because
ice blasting discourages algae, sea slime
and mussels from reattaching.
Wyatt concluded, “From food service
cleaning to industrial equipment maintenance,
there are many different types of
machines and tools used to tackle these
tough tasks. Water blasting, steam cleaning
and sand blasting are all good ways
both commercial and industrial companies
use to clean their property and
equipment. These days, however, there’s
an even better way to get the job done.
Using a dry ice blasting machine works
better in many instances, does so more
safely than other types of machines and
costs less to operate.”
THE HISTORY
The first ice blasting patent was filed
in 1952, as a “means and methods for
cleaning and polishing automobiles” (US
patent 2699403).
In 1959, Unilever filed a patent for using
ice blasting to remove meat from bone.
The first company to attempt to
commercialize ice blasting technology
was Universal Ice Blast Inc., established
in the early 1990s based on a grant from
the Navy, who were interested in using
the technology to clean inside ship engine
rooms and other such enclosed
spaces on marine vessels.
The machines created by Universal
Ice Blast made ice continuously. When
a supply of water and electricity where
connected into the machine, a cold drum
would rotate continuously through a
bath of water. A thin sheet of ice would
form on the drum before hitting a blade,
which would shatter the ice sheet into
small flakes. These flakes would then be
sucked up into a fast-moving air-stream
and ejected out of a nozzle.
The machines made by Universal Ice
Blast used a “two-hose” system. Twohose
blasting systems use separate hoses
for air and for the ice. The air hose
is pressurized and ends in a converging-diverging
nozzle. The air accelerates
through the nozzle and reaches supersonic
speeds.
As the air becomes supersonic, its
pressure drops drastically, creating a suction
effect. This acts to suck the ice up
through a second hose, which is connected
into the air-stream after the converging-diverging
nozzle.
The ice is sucked up through the
hose and merges with the supersonic airstream,
which acts to accelerate it. The
mixture of ice and air is then ejected out
of the end of the nozzle.
Two-hose systems cannot accelerate
the ice particles to very high speeds
since the ice is not in contact with the
fast-moving air for very long and the suction
system results in large losses in air
velocity. In comparison, “one-hose” systems,
where the blast media is combined
with the air before the converging-diverging
nozzle, tends to be much more
powerful and reliable.
Enter Coulson.
Universal Ice Blast was purchased in
2012 by the Coulson Group of Companies.
Coulson wanted tech to clean
its airplanes but then started working to
reduce size of machines to make them
commercially viable even at the individual
commercial cleaning level.
In 2015, the company was rebranded
as Coulson Ice Blast. Coulson Ice
Blast redesigned the technology, focusing
around the more powerful and reliable
one-hose system. The IceStorm90 was
the first one-hose ice blasting machine.
The IceStorm90 is significantly more
compact than previous ice blasting machines.
The one-hose system also makes
it very reliable and much more powerful.
Ice cubes can be pre-made and brought
to the worksite, or they can be produced
continuously by ice cube machines.
Coulson now sells the IceStorm90 and
the IceStorm90+. The IceStorm90+ is capable
of blasting with either ice or dry ice.
TO PRESSURE
WASHING AND BEYOND…
This last factoid is important, and,
possibly, transformative.
Wyatt well describes how a dry ice
machine works on the same principle as
a sandblaster. However, instead of shooting
sand particles out of a nozzle with
pressurized air, the ice blaster forces tiny
dry ice pellets out under pressure instead.
When these particles of dry ice hit the
surface they are cleaning, they cause the
top layer of coating to shrink, which creates
cracks in the surface layer. The pellets
then come in contact with the warmer
surface below and absorb the heat. This
heat absorption causes the pellets of dry
ice to turn back into carbon dioxide gas,
which expands, causing the outer coating
to loosen and break free.
As Wyatt says, ice blasting, then, is
a great sand blaster alternative because
it is non-abrasive. Because the dry ice
particles turn back into a gas instantaneously
upon impact, the cleaning method
causes no damage to the hard surface
being blasted.
This fact alone makes ice blasting
machines usable for more industrial and
commercial cleaning applications than
just sand blasting. In many cases where
sand blasting or ice blasting could be
used, ice blasting could in fact provide a
better result faster.
TURNING THE TIDE
A lot of research and development
has been put into this new technology to
enable it to possibly knock down some
big, established industries. Only time will
tell how successful that push might be.
Skepticism in matters of innovation
like these are certainly understandable
and often even sensible. However, in cases
such as these, oftentimes, human nature
is to tend to be resistant to change when
in fact there is no reason to be. Or, at the
least, greater investigation is required.
People often talk about a lack innovation
in the pressure wash industry. If
nothing else, Coulson is certainly pushing
the envelope with their new technology.
The water consumption issue alone
– perhaps the greatest threat to the industry
in general – merits and full and
complete look by the industry.
VOL. 2, NO. 1 | WINTER 2020 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | 21