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June 8, 2022
Today I would like to talk about the difference between dry ice and dry snow particles. I am going to compare the pellets’ size and what they are used for. At the end of this article you will become a master of dry ice/snow particle sizes!
So, let’s begin – first some theory to help you understand the matter. Dry ice and dry snow pellets are produced from liquid CO2 (LCO2). In the case of dry ice, it is produced by a machine called a pelletizer that compresses the LCO2 in a chamber and outputs fresh dry ice ready for use.
Dry snow is usually produced in the blasting gun directly from LCO2, one needs no special machine to produce it. There are also other ways as we recently demonstrated (Sensi Snow Technology). We developed a new machine called a dry snow crusher, which can crush regular dry ice pellets into dry snow particles. The benefit of this process is the irregular shape of the resulting dry snow particles that provides a much more “powerful” cleaning effect.
Now, let’s dive back to our main topic – the size of pellets. For dry ice we usually have 5 different pellet sizes:
| Dry Ice – Pellet size | Typical use |
|---|---|
| Micro-pellets – Ø 1,7mm | Dry ice blasting of surfaces with small cavities and fine patterns. Micro-pellets needs to be produce on-site. |
| Micro-pellets – Ø 2,2mm | Dry ice blasting of surfaces with small cavities and fine patterns. MicroDry ice blasting of surfaces with small cavities and fine patterns. Micro-pellets needs to be produce on-site.-pellets needs to be produce on-site. |
| Pellets – Ø 3mm | Traditional pellets are mostly used for dry ice blasting, but also used for quick cooling of food and biopharmaceutical products. |
| Nuggets – Ø 8mm | Used for transportation and conservation of food and biopharmaceutical products. |
| Nuggets – Ø 16mm | Used for transportation and conservation of food and biopharmaceutical products. |
The size of dry snow particles, instead, is quite uniform.
| Dry Snow – Particle size | Typical use |
|---|---|
| About 200 microns | Cleaning of oil, grease, blasting of delicate surfaces, degreasing surface before painting. |
We can see that dry ice comes in many different sizes, while dry snow is more uniform in size. Both have great cleaning abilities on sensitive surfaces, which makes them ideal in any modern day production process.
On this note, I will conclude my article, please comment and share it!
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Dry ice and dry snow solutions
To check out how our dry ice/snow solutions can improve your cleaning and production processes, please visit our dry ice technology page.