Dry Ice Blasting & Cleaning Blog

Case Study: A Day in the Salt Mines Leaves Dry Ice Blasting the Winner vs. Manual Chiseling of Hardened Build-Up

Dry Ice Blasting for a Salt Mine

At Polar Clean, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the results we achieve for our clients in places like power plants, oil refineries, manufacturing facilities, and historic restoration sites can be dramatic.

Years – even decades – of dirt, grime and build-up of every variety melts away in a process that uses no water, no chemicals and leaves behind no mess.

But often, an equally dramatic aspect of our work is the amount of work we can save our clients, who are some of the hardest working people we know. Some of them, in fact, can talk about going “into the salt mines” unironically…

A Better Alternative to Weekend Power Chiseling

Salt mine cleaning, like salt mine work, is no ordinary job. With shafts that can descend hundreds of feet into the earth, it is a highly specialized environment that calls for a highly specialized cleaning process.

Keeping shafts clean and free of debris is critical for ventilation, and for the safe and effective movement of people and equipment in and out of the mine.

An additional challenge arises from the fact that ground water gradually leaches in and creates a hardened build-up on the shaft surface that has to be removed to prevent narrowing of these critical passageways.

Before discovering dry ice (CO2) blasting, our salt mine customer’s employees were using power chisels to chip off the buildup, a tedious process that had to be repeated weekend after weekend.

When they discovered dry ice cleaning in a Google search, the company did some additional research and decided to give Polar Clean a try. The Polar Clean team has deep experience and training for cleaning operations that require work in tight spaces both overhead and underground, including experience with jobs that require supplied air and/or rappelling.

Twice as Much Build-Up Removal in Less Time, with Fewer People

A day in the salt mines was not a particularly extraordinary day for the Polar Clean team.

For the salt mine workers who’d spent weekends power chiseling, however, the results were a little more exciting. We were able to remove about twice as much build-up in the same amount of time, using fewer people – and no weekends.

It was an enormous savings of time and of course, in the salt mines, as in every workplace, time is money.

Additional advantages include the fact that dry ice dissipates upon contact, so while it can be used to blast away some of the most stubborn forms of build-up imaginable, it does not create secondary waste material.

Get Started Today

If you’ve got a challenging cleaning job that requires messy, time-consuming or tedious manual labor, contact us to learn more about why so many rely on Polar Clean for their most difficult and time-consuming cleaning needs.

Contact us to learn more about dry ice blasting services