NAS Kingsville was one of the first Navy facilities to open a Corrosion Control Facility complete with the FLASHJET painting and stripping process. Opened in July 1998, the FLASHJET system incorporates a patented process that combines pulsed light energy and a steady stream of dry ice pellets to remove up to 4 square feet of paint per minute for less than $4 per square foot. That is less than one-third the cost of manual removal and one-sixth the cost of chemical stripping. Compared to chemical stripping and media blast processes, the FLASHJET process is environmentally safe, produces 90 percent less waste, with no environmental issues.
The Boeing FLASHJET Process is designed to safely and economically remove aircraft coatings from both metals and composites without the use of hazardous chemicals or potentially damaging impingement media. It significantly reduces the amount of hazardous waste generated compared to chemical stripping or media blasting processes.
FLASHJET combines a xenon flash lamp with a low-pressure carbon dioxide (dry ice) pellet stream. The xenon flash lamp ablates the coating from the substrate and the dry ice pellets cool and clean the substrate and sweep the coating ash into an effluent capture system. The effluent capture system vacuums the by-product dust through air pollution control equipment including High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, leaving the air clean enough for venting to the atmosphere.
