Dry Ice Cleaning Based Sustainable Cleaning Technology for Oil and Gas Storage Tanks

Traditional cleaning techniques may present risks for workers' healthiness and safety. A huge amount of dust generated through abrasive blasting from the substrate and abrasive can lead to serious health hazards such as lung cancer, skin burns, eye lesions, excessive noise and undesired waste. In this paper, dry ice cleaning technology is presented to mitigate the disadvantages of the traditional blasting methods. It is a solid form of carbon dioxide that accelerated with a very low temperature of -78.5 ºC which sublimated directly after the attack the surface and goes to the atmosphere without leaving any waste. Therefore, dry ice blasting is used in many environmentally damaging solvent to remove a wide range of materials such as paint, oil, wax, bitumen and synthetic residues without damaging the surface. It is a sustainable process that minimizes the negative environmental impact and safe employees and equipment. For that reason, dry ice cleaning can be considered as environmentally friendly cleaning technology suitable for cleaning oil and gas storage tanks.