Ice pigging is a cleaning technique that uses high-solids ice slurry which is pumped under pressure to deliver a wall shear stress on the pipe, cleaning it through physical abrasion. Made of just water and salt, ice pigs do their cleaning, unblocking, debris entraining and transport before melting back into their original components (commonly salt and water) offering a physical clean thousands of times more effective then flushing, without chemicals or risk of getting stuck.

iNPIPE PRODUCTS™ conducts constant research and development into alternative pigging methods; for example, the use of ice pigging for potential decommissioning pipelines or in lines that are conventionally termed “unpiggable . Successful trials using ice pigging indicate that it is much more efficient than simple water flushing and that it can hugely reduce the quantities of waste, decontaminated water to be safely disposed if applied properly. Trials of ice pigging have also indicated that the process is capable of progressive wax removal in test loops to avoid potential pipeline blocking.

Our ice volume calculation provides indicative ice volumes based on pipe internal diameter, length of pipe, ambient temperature amongst other critical design consideration. To find out more contact our Engineering team to gain access to the calculator application software.