Turbine blades can suffer from fouling, leading to decreased efficiency and even failure. CO2 blasting is a popular method of cleaning, using high-pressure frozen pellets to remove deposits without damaging the blades. The process is flexible, non-toxic, and leaves no mess.
Fouling on turbine blades can have a significant adverse effect on their performance and can, if left unchecked, lead to turbine failure. Turbine cleaning is therefore a key part of any turbine operator’s maintenance regime. One of the most popular methods of cleaning turbines is the pressurized carbon dioxide (CO2) jet process. This process involves projecting a high-pressure stream of frozen CO2 pellets onto dirty turbine parts. The pellets remove fouling on the turbine blades without damaging them and evaporate into CO2 gas, leaving no further mess.
Turbines are finely engineered pieces of machinery that rely on a high degree of balance integrity to operate at optimum efficiency. Unfortunately, the average turbine operating environment is quite aggressive and laden with contaminants that rapidly form scale or carbon deposits on the blades in the various stages of the turbine. These deposits, or encrustations, can grow to the point of causing a state of imbalance in the turbine rotor. This leads to a gradual decrease in rotational speeds and overall turbine efficiency and can, if not rectified, lead to rotor damage. These facts make regular removal of scale buildup an essential part of any turbine maintenance program.
The average industrial or aeronautical turbine has several stages made up of thousands of individual turbine blades. In some cases, the performance-impairing deposits on these blades can be removed by hand with solvents. This however is a very time consuming process and other turbine cleaning methods such as CO2 blasting are much more popular. The CO2 turbine cleaning process involves sandblasting the blade surfaces with a high pressure jet of frozen CO2 pellets. Commonly known as dry ice, frozen CO2 is softer than sand or glass beads and won’t damage the sensitive blades or alter their geometry, but it’s hard enough to get rid of stubborn fouling.
The CO2 pellets are typically projected by a stream of compressed air from a portable lance, thus making the process flexible enough to fit into all the small spaces of the turbine. CO2 is also non-toxic and poses no danger to the process operator or the environment. An added benefit of this type of turbine cleaning is the lack of mess left after cleaning. The frozen pellets heat up rapidly during the process and evaporate into harmless carbon dioxide gas, thus leaving the work area clean and free of water and debris.
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