Industrial cleaning with ice offers environmental advances and cost savings

1. SPRING 2017
pulpandpapercanada.com
FALL 2017
PULP
PAPER
&
OVER 100 YEARS OF SERVING THE INDUSTRY
C A N A D A
INDUSTRIAL CLEANING
WITH ICE
MAXIMIZING
CONVEYOR OPERATION
GREEN ENERGY POWER
DIVERSIFYING
CANADIAN
OPERATIONS

2. 16 Fall 2017 PULP & PAPER CANADA www.pulpandpapercanada.com
C
oulson Ice Blast, a British
Columbia startup that launched
this February, recently
commenced mass production of
a new technology using blasted ice for
industrial cleaning. It calls its mobile ice-
blasting machine the IceStorm90 because
it produces what looks like a storm of ice
pellets that can be focused into a stream
as narrow as two inches wide. Although
it operates along lines similar to earlier
technologies that blast a medium such as
pressurized water, sand, sodium bicar-
bonate, or dry ice pellets onto a soiled or
contaminated surface, Coulson Ice Blast
vice president Foster Coulson says ice
blasting represents a major advance in
environmentally friendly cleaning.
“As far as I know, we’re the only ones
doing it, and we’ve spent a lot of time
and energy filing new patents to protect
the technology. It’s something unique and
special, and we’re very excited to bring
it to market and really try to advance
the state of industrial cleaning — which
hasn’t really seen any innovation in the
last 70 years since dry ice blasting tech-
nology was invented in 1947. Over the
same time period, environmental regu-
lations have significantly increased, yet
innovations in technology have been
lacking.”
Coulson says ice blasting technology
exceeds almost every environmental
regulation that has been set. “It involves
no added chemicals, no environmental
contaminants, negligible airborne contam-
inants, and minimal residual water waste.
It’s pretty much the most environmentally
friendly way you can clean.”
How it works
“On average, our system uses 95 per cent
less water than a pressure washer,” he
specifies. “By contrast, pressure washing
varies with the technology, but it can use
up to about 1,200 U.S. gallons of water
per hour. Depending on what you’re
blasting, trying to treat and dispose of
that amount of water can be very costly.”
He explains that the environmental
advantages of cleaning with ice derive
partly from the fact that it is the only
medium that can exist during blasting
in all three phases of matter: solid, liquid
and gas.
“It hits the surface it’s cleaning
as a solid, then half of it turns into a
gas which evaporates, and the other
half stays in a liquid form which pulls
airborne contaminants down to the
ground instead of releasing them into
the atmosphere.”
By contrast, he says other forms of
chemical, abrasive and dry ice blasting
often produce hazardous airborne
contaminants, so much so that workers
operating these forms of blasting typi-
cally require artificial respiration or
breathing protection devices.
He says the ice blasting process
creates relatively little residual waste.
“On average, blasting at three pounds a
minute you’ll have around 10 gallons an
hour of water residual waste.”
In terms of media costs, ice is also
cheaper than, say, dry ice blasting
pellets, which cost from 90 cents up
to two dollars per pound. According to
Coulson, ice costs less than one cent per
pound to make or 12 cents per pound
when purchased.
Icy advantages
Coulson says other factors that make ice
attractive as a cleaning medium are that
it is natural and readily available. “For
other chemical processes and dry ice
blasting, you need to buy artificial media
in the form of premade chemicals or dry
ice pellets. But ice is natural and bare-
bones basic. If you wanted to, you could
make it inexpensively yourself from any
type of water source — tap water, for
example — and store it indefinitely in
a freezer. Contractors often store ice in
Industrial cleaning with ice offers environmental
advances and cost savings
ICE IT OFF
Photos:
Coulson
Ice
Blast
WATER MANAGEMENT
By Victoria Gaitskell
Ice blasting can help remove lime build-up, dirt, grease, oil, pulp residue and more.

3. www.pulpandpapercanada.com Fall 2017 PULP & PAPER CANADA 17
300-, 400-, or 500-pound totes where
it lasts for four or five days.” As alter-
natives to making ice yourself, Coulson
Ice Blast also sells ice-making machines
and offers ice distribution through its
partnership with Reddy Ice (U.S.A.), an
ice manufacturing company.
He adds that ice is one of the only
cleaning media that can turn corners
during blasting. “If you needed a
cleaning agent that can travel, say,
along a 30-foot hose with S-curves and
a 90-degree corner, few media could
do the job, because most of them lose
energy travelling around corners and get
stuck. But ice would be able to clean
perfectly throughout the whole length
of the hose.”
Successes in the industry
Ice blasting is suitable for a range of
industries including aerospace, nuclear,
petrochemical, plastics, power genera-
tion, printing, and pulp and paper.
One example is the AFCO Denso/
Bosch plant in South Carolina, which
uses the equipment to deburr copper
motor parts. “Since 1995, AFCO has
continuously operated an Ice Blast
machine to deburr copper motor arma-
ture faces for fuel pumps. The use of
Ice Blast to deburr has been crucial
to producing our high quality fuel
pumps...for the North American auto-
motive industry,” wrote AFCO project
engineer Jack Engram in a statement.
“Ice Blast technology continues to be a
cost-effective solution for our deburring
and precision cleaning needs. Aside
from normal maintenance, the Ice Blast
equipment has performed reliably for the
last 20 years. The ability to rely on this
machine eases our minds in production
because we are confident that the Ice
Blast will achieve the necessary standard
of clean every time.”
Meanwhile, the British Columbian
branch of Disaster Kleenup International
(DKI), a North American disaster resto-
ration contractor with estimated annual
revenues in excess of $1.7 billion uses
Coulson Ice Blast equipment to remove
lead paint from concrete.
Rich Canadian roots
Coulson Ice Blast grew out of a family
business started by Coulson’s grandfa-
ther, Cliff, when he launched a small
logging company in Port Alberni on
Vancouver Island in 1960. Coulson’s
father, Wayne, subsequently grew the
company into The Coulson Group, a
conglomerate whose other activities have
included manufacturing wood products
and aviation. Within the last two years,
they sold off the logging and lumber
operations to concentrate on aviation
and ice blasting. While Wayne continues
as president and CEO of The Coulson
Group, Coulson’s brother Britton is vice
president of the aviation division, which
involves overhauling aircraft compo-
nents and aerial fire suppression.
The natural surroundings of Port
Alberni yield such local attractions as
salmon and sport fishing, provincial
parks, hiking trails, mountain climbing,
Cathedral Grove (an old-growth forest
of towering Douglas fir trees, some
over 800 years old), and Della Falls
(Canada’s highest waterfall). Given this
superb environment, it is not surprising
that environmental friendliness is a key
value underlying The Coulson Group
operations.
Its association with ice blasting equip-
ment began in 2012, when it wanted to
remove paint from a Martin Mars aircraft
it had acquired and repaint the plane in
their fleet colours: red and white. The
paint removal task raised technical prob-
lems, however, since the Martin Mars
can only take off on water, it had to stay
situated beside a lake. This complica-
tion ruled out pressure washing, which
requires more water than was available at
the plane’s site. Sand blasting was equally
impractical, since the Martin Mars is the
world’s largest flying water bomber, too
big to permit the full containment that
sand blasting requires.
Instead, an engineer at The Coulson
Group suggested and built an ice-
blasting machine using technology he
learned at a previous job at Universal Ice
Blast, an American company that manu-
factured ice blasting equipment until it
went bankrupt in 2001. The Coulson
Group was so pleased with the results
that they tracked down the former
owner of Universal Ice Blast, purchased
the technology from him, and have been
refining it and planning the future of
Coulson Ice Blast ever since. PPC
Vice president Foster Coulson says the system uses 95% less water than a pressure washer.
The environmental advantages of cleaning
with ice derive partly from the fact that it
is the only medium that can exist during
blasting in all three phases of matter: solid,
liquid and gas.