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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.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:49PM
This might just be a bad metaphor...but assuming it ISN'T, I don't see a small amount of dust and gunk causing a problem. They'll just "jiggle" with it.
But even if that doesn't work, I could see this coating keeping the freezer cleaner in the first place. What kind of "gunk" is building up? If it's something like spilled ice cream or sauce, it's mostly water so it shouldn't adhere to the coating very well. And dry dust can attach to the freezer wall, but then ice can attach to the dust, and since the ice can't adhere to anything else eventually the weight of that ice will pull the dust off with it.