BritishV8 Forum

Amazing way to degrease and clean aluminum or any metal parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F91YbOlm_Ts

If you know somebody who does it and is competitive on their fees it could be useful and should do a very good job, especially if an unchanged appearance is important. But the method is still in its infancy, sort of like waterjet cutting a decade ago and some of the equipment is not so good. I'm sure you noticed the irregular flow from the nozzle. The dry ice is typically generated from compressed CO2 and you can expect to go through a lot of it. Another thing that might not immediately be clear is that the operator will usually have to wear a fresh air respirator because the volume of CO2 delivered will drive away the oxygen in the immediate area. Certainly this would be a necessity if used indoors. It will also lower the temperature in the work area considerably, and frostbite can be a hazard.

Jim

Talk about CO2 emissions!

Yeah, but it isn't really production of CO2 since it is initially distilled out of the air, usually by a weld gas company. Just recycled. Can you imagine how much air has to be distilled to produce a tank of Helium? Everything else is more or less a commercially valuable by-product. I'm guessing there is a great deal of nitrogen that just gets vented right back to the atmosphere.

Jim

Since there is no media to clean up, I'm sure this leaves a pile of black carbon or goo behind. It looks like the black stuff they removed was very dry so it probably went through an ultrasonic or other cleaning process first. Gooey stuff is hard to 'blast' off, no matter the media or air pressure used.

-BMC.

And here I thought that helium was a byproduct of gas wells in the Amarillo locale!

It was a trick question Larry, Helium is lighter than air and escapes from the exosphere to space at the rate of about 50g/sec so at the surface there isn't really much of a practical amount to be acquired through distillation.

Jim