A few days ago, one customer told me that his full automatic dry ice pelletizer produced less dry ice than its capacity. The machine is of high quality but less capacity. We believe that most customers have similar experience and we would like to simply explain as below.
There are two main factors to affect the capacity of dry ice production machine:
1.The size of ice tube
2.The CO2 feeding conditions
Generally speaking, the size of ice tube is fixed once the dry ice machine technician finished the design. The designed capacity may be a little small or big due to the specifications limit of motor, oil pump, hydraulic and electrical components from suppliers, however the difference is not big at all.
But why sometimes the real capacity of dry ice maker is much more less than designed capacity? In fact, the big difference comes from the CO2 feeding conditions, which 100% refrigerated liquid CO2 is expected to fed into ice tube of dry ice making machine, but it is not in reality. According to our professional engineer who is in charge of dry ice making machine in WesTech, the raw material for dry ice production is refrigerated liquid CO2, not gas CO2, but the refrigerated liquid CO2 is vaporized into gas CO2 in feeding pipe every minute and second after it flows from refrigerated CO2 storage container (CO2 dewar or tank). So we need to take measures to reduce vaporization, such as correct CO2 feeding pipe arrangement, pipe insulation etc. Because the vaporized gas CO2 can’t generate dry ice, it is just discharged in air, only liquid CO2 can generate dry ice, and the liquid-solid conversion ratio is around 1:0.4 averagely for dry ice production costing calculation purpose. So it is important to keep CO2 to be refrigerated and liquid.
The customer finally gets the satisfactory capacity for his dry ice pellet machine. If interested, please contact us
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