In many in­dus­tri­al, com­mer­cial and pub­lic areas floors and other hard sur­faces are soiled with var­i­ous kinds of dirt. De­pend­ing on the prop­er­ties of the re­spec­tive sur­faces and soil com­po­nents, the re­sult­ing soil­ings can be re­moved with high ef­fort only. In the case of floors, e.g. porous and struc­tured sur­faces are prob­lem­at­ic, in the case of soil­ings oils, var­nish­es (metal pro­cess­ing, au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try), poly­mers, rub­ber abra­sion (e.g. fork-lift trucks in in­dus­tri­al areas, hangars for air­plane main­te­nance), resid­u­als of pro­duc­tion (e.g. foods, chem­i­cals, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals) or chew­ing gum (traf­fic routes) are crit­i­cal. Clean­ing en­ter­pris­es are in­creas­ing­ly as­signed to re­move such soil­ings. These en­ter­pris­es are asked to re­move the prob­lem­at­ic soils quick­ly, ef­fec­tive­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly. A big part of the sur­faces which have to be cleaned are in­ac­ces­si­ble or com­plex so that com­mon­ly used clean­ing ma­chines can not be ap­plied eco­nom­i­cal­ly.

Fur­ther­more, also in the case of sur­faces which are ac­ces­si­ble for clean­ing ma­chines, ex­pen­sive ad­di­tion­al work can be nec­es­sary. In prin­ci­ple, the use of the ice-blast tech­nol­o­gy is a so­lu­tion. This tech­nol­o­gy cre­ates ice par­ti­cles from water and ap­plies them by means of com­pressed air onto the sur­faces. With­in the re­search pro­ject a mo­bile ice blast sys­tem was de­vel­oped in co­op­er­a­tion with clean­ing en­ter­pris­es. This mo­bile sys­tem is able to meet dif­fer­ent clean­ing re­quire­ments by mod­i­fi­ca­tion of vari­able pa­ram­e­ters as air flow rate, pres­sure and kind of noz­zles. In the case of heav­i­ly soiled hard sur­faces or hy­giene re­quire­ments dif­fer­ent clean­ing aux­il­iaries or dis­in­fect­ing agents can be added.

With­in prac­ti­cal tests the ice blast sys­tem was test­ed in dif­fer­ent in­dus­tri­al, com­mer­cial and pub­lic areas on dif­fer­ent kinds of prac­ti­cal­ly rel­e­vant hard sur­faces and soil­ings. The at­tain­able clean­ing per­for­mance and the per­for­mance per time unit were cal­cu­lat­ed with re­gard to the kind and quan­ti­ty of prac­ti­cal soil­ings and dif­fer­ent hard sur­faces. Ac­cord­ing to these in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the ice blast tech­nol­o­gy is more eco­nom­i­cal than all other meth­ods used in prac­tice.

We thank the Ar­beits­ge­mein­schaft in­dus­trieller Forschungvere­ini­gun­gen e.V. (AiF) (As­so­ci­a­tion of In­dus­tri­al Re­search Or­gan­i­sa­tions) (AiF-No. 14143 N) for fund­ing these pro­jects through a fi­nan­cial sup­port by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs.

Fur­ther­more we would like to thank dif­fer­ent mem­ber com­pa­nies for sup­port­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The re­search re­port is avail­able on re­quest from FRT.