Is The Ice Free Road Close At Hand?

Is The Ice Free Road Close At Hand?

Is The Ice Free Road Close At Hand?

Driving during the recent bad weather has proven hazardous, and during the worst of the blizzards it was impossible as snow and ice closed down swathes of the country and many motorists were left stranded. However, a team of Harvard engineers have been busy coming up with a way in which ice on roads could be a thing of the past.

The Harvard University team have been examining the problem. They focused on how to prevent ice formation as water droplets come into contact with surfaces at low temperature to become ice. Large, exposed surfaces of roads are ideal for ice formation, and the goal of the team was to find a way of preventing ice formation and disrupting the process before it could become a problem for drivers.

The team attacked the problem on an atomic and molecular level. Freezing starts when droplets collide with a surface, but little is actually known about what happens when droplets hit a surface at low temperature. With this in mind, the researchers tried to understand the full complexities of the freezing process and analysed high-speed videos of super-cooled droplets hitting surfaces that were modelled after those found in nature.

Based on these observations, they designed and demonstrated ice-free nanostructured materials that repel water droplets before they have a chance to freeze. When water hits this nanostructured surface, it first spreads out but then the process reverses as the droplet retracts to a spherical shape and bounces back off the surface without having a chance to freeze. It is this series of microscopic silicon bristles which help disrupt the freezing process by stopping the water from coming to a rest. Even more impressively, this material is effective at a temperature range of minus 25 to minus 30 degrees Celsius, with the team stating that below this temperature the ice will have had a disrupted surface and so will be far easier to remove.

In comparison with traditional methods such as gritting, this new approach is efficient and environmentally friendly, with the possibilities for its application almost limitless as a whole host of surfaces could be treated such as airplane wings, buildings and even power lines.

Revolutionary and impressive as this is, the researchers admit the technology hasn't quite revealed all of its secrets yet, and it is unlikely it will be used any time soon as a whole host of further testing is still required. For now drivers can only dream of ice free roads and just hope the gritter does not cause a windscreen chip as it hurtles by on a dark and icy road.

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