#deicing

“Airports delays are common, but especially during winter when jets need to be dowsed with thousands of gallons of deicing fluids to prevent ice formation and maintain the plane’s aerodynamics to avoid fatal accidents like the tragic Air Florida flight that fell into the Potomac River in Washington, DC directly after lift-off in a 1982 snow storm.

But as soon as any de-iced airplane takes off, most of the liquid slides from the surface of the aircraft and ends up polluting streams, lakes, and oceans.

Now, endeavoring to make a more efficient product immune to ice for such demanding industries, a team at the University of Illinois Chicago have developed a longer-lasting and eco-friendly alternative to conventional deicers.

“Glycols dissolve very fast and get washed away before the plane takes off, and it’s a serious problem that costs hundreds of millions of dollars—most of which literally ends up in the drain,” said Sushant Anand, assistant professor of mechanical engineering...

“A key point was to use materials which are bio-friendly. For example the anti-freezing gels we prepared are made of dimethyl sulfoxide (a by-product of plant industry and having miraculous medicinal properties) and gelatin (the stuff you use in making deserts and custards): so all very safe items.”

The gels are the best performing ones and have a significant edge amongst the developed formulations. They are easy to fabricate, require only two components, they can be easily cured/sprayed/painted/coated on any surface, regardless of shape. The best part is they are optically transparent even under icing/frosting conditions.

Their research published in Advanced Materials showed that, compared to commercial coatings available in today’s market, they perform better by an order of magnitude after exhaustive testing...

Of course, more exhaustive testing on actual airplanes in wind-turbines are needed to pass industrial test requirements before adopting them for real-life usage, but they do promise significant improvement over many commercial solutions available in the market presently.