The wonder refrigerant/cooling agent scores over any other on many accounts. It evaporates directly without leaving any traces, provides 70% more Kcal of refrigeration cooling than conventional water ice, and is an ideal cooling medium for reducing temperature to as low as -78°C.

CO2 is obtained by direct fuel burning, or from by-product of boiler/furnace flues, brewery/distillery fermenters, fertilizer gases or any other sources. CO2 so obtained is purified. The purified CO2 gas is first made into liquid, which is then processed to make dry ice.

Dry ice is formed by allowing pure liquid CO2 under pressure to expand to a reduced pressure. Because of Joule-Thomson effect cooling takes place and 'snow' is formed. The snow is compressed to form blocks or nuggets.

Flow diagram for making dry ice

Dry ice is translucent/white in colour having a density of about 1.5 kg/dm3 at atmospheric pressure and at a temperature of -79°C.

Foundry Chemical makes different types of dry ice machines for various applications. We can supply machines with cylindrical blocks or with rectangular blocks. Generally block size is 5" dia x 12" length and weighs about 7-8 kg. The Dry Ice Plant sizes from 45 kg/hr to 300 kg/hr are readily available. Dry ice machines making small size blocks/nuggets of 1.0" - 1.5" are also available.

For very small requirements we can offer a small inexpensive gadget which can make dry ice from a CO2 cylinder. You can make dry ice snow at the rate of 5-10 kg/hr but the "block" is not firm and efficiency is less as compared to dry ice obtained from regular CO2 plants. This equipment is ideal if requirement is small and occasional.

We also supply machine to cut blocks, machines to put/spray dry ice on continuous conveyer belts of food/medicine for filling CO2/dry ice in food/medicine/chemical packages. Special freezer for temperature as low as -45°C can also be made available.

We make FRP-Polyurethane insulated boxes and also canvas bags with polyurethane sheets for storage of dry ice. These have excellent insulation properties and keep the dry ice for longer time with minimum evaporation losses.