WHAT IS DRY ICE?Dry Ice is the common name for solid carbon dioxide (CO2). Dry Ice is extremely cold at -78oC. Dry Ice sublimates (which means it turms directly from a solid into a gas)without residue, as it consists of highly pure carbon dioxide. Dry Ice is neither poisonous nor flammable, it is colourless, tasteless, odourless and bacteriostatic -creates an inert atmosphere. These properties make it extremely valuable as a refrigerant not only for chemical and technical applications but to a large extent also in the food industry. Compared with water ice that has a cooling potential of 335 kJ/kg at 0oC, the latent heat of vaporisation of Dry Ice is almost twice as high (635 kJ/kg) as that of water ice. If we, however, compare the volume of the two products, it proves that the cooling potential of a 1,000 cm3 Dry Ice cube is 3.3 times as high as that of a water ice cube of the same size. The advantages of Dry Ice are obvious, the more so since it evaporates completely residue-free. |
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