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posted by takyon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @12:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the give-them-the-slip-off dept.

On your car windshield, ice is a nuisance. But on an airplane, wind turbine, oil rig, or power line, it can be downright dangerous. And removing it with current methods—usually chemical melting agents or labor-intensive scrapers and hammers—is difficult and expensive work.

But a new durable and inexpensive ice-repellent coating could change that. Thin, clear, and slightly rubbery to the touch, the spray-on formula could make ice slide off equipment, airplanes, and car windshields with only the force of gravity or a gentle breeze.

Researchers say the discovery could have major implications in industries like energy, shipping, and transportation, where ice is a constant problem in cold climates.

The coating could also lead to big energy savings in freezers, which today rely on complex and energy-hungry defrosting systems to stay frost-free. An ice-repelling coating could do the same job with zero energy consumption, making household and industrial freezers up to 20 percent more efficient. The paper is published in the journal Science Advances [open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501496].

Essentially, the rubbery coating jiggles and shakes the ice off.

University of Michigan source.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2016, @05:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2016, @05:49AM (#318890)
    Apparently Panasonic still makes refrigerators that don't have automatic defrosting. I have one of these, and a day out of every month is a miserable time for me as I have to scrape off the thick layer of ice that forms on the walls of the freezer. A coating like this would be a godsend. I'd just have to toss the ice that falls on top of the food every now and then, which is a hell of a lot easier than the drudge work of scraping the freezer walls once a month.