Can I use a CO2 laser to clean a surface?

CO2 gas-tube lasers are well known for cutting machines in relation to steel and glass material. There exist also pulsed Co2 laser which are used for surface cleaning. High-speed polygon in combination with Co2 laser are used to strip military aircraft in the US.

But as an industrial cleaning tool it is a no go. Due to the dimensions and the gas medium as a laser beam generator, it is to bulky and complex. This 10x higher wave length number has some advantages in cleaning on the absorption side. This wavelength is absorbed by most organic contaminants at a higher level than the infra-red 1064 nm laser.  This means every Watt unit of laser energy reaching the surface is transferring its light energy at a higher level than one unit of our  1064 nm type infra-red laser. Further, the <Co2 10.000 nm wavelength is not well absorbed by aluminium. So yes in well specific cases in has some advantages, but mainly, it is not used in industrial cleaning applications. Typical due to the high-energy laser beam this kind of light energy is guided over mirrors instead of a flexible fibre. This is the reason in every Co2-based application, the bulky laser source has to be in a very short distance from the surface.