Dry Ice Blasting Generators and Turbines

Last week, The Cryogenic Institute of New England, Inc. sent out its dry ice blasting crew to Cos Cob, Connecticut. A generator that provides additional electric power during peak usage times had been damaged from a failure within the rotor. The owner of the generator, NRG Energy, required that it be repaired and back online before energy usage increases with the warmer weather. Before the damaged windings could be repaired and the entire unit repainted; it needed to be cleaned.

That is where we came in. The contractor repairing the generator stator called upon us to clean the entire system using our dry ice blasting equipment. Dry ice blast cleaning would remove any carbon, flaking paint and other contaminants from the generator stator. In past experiences, they had cleaned the generator assembly by hand with solvents. Cleaning one of these generator stators by hand requires a significant amount of time. We were able to dry ice blast clean the generator stator in far less than two day’s time. This helped reduce the overall downtime of the generator.

The damaged area of the stator required finesse and great precision while dry ice blasting. The generator cleaned up very well and a significant amount of flaking paint was removed from the damaged end of the stator. In addition, the carbon residue was removed so that any new coatings applied to the stator would not be contaminated.

Below are pictures of the generator stator before it is dry ice blast cleaned. You can see the carbon build up, which is a grayish-black color. In addition, you can see the damage to the windings which is at the bottom in white.



The following pictures show the generator stator after dry ice blast cleaning. The carbon has been removed and flaking paint that had been damaged during the failure.



For more information about dry ice blast cleaning generators, turbines and other power generation equipment, please visit our dry ice blasting power generation page. If you have any questions or comments, please call (800) 739-7949 or email info@nitrofreeze.com.