Deicing sounds simple, it’s not a “Rocket-Science”, right? Wrong!
Design of a reliable, energy- and cost-saving deicing system takes materials science, theory of heat and mass transfer, skill in power-and control electronics, solid mechanics and hundreds of know-how elements. If you don’t want to spend years and $$$ to solve your problem with ice and snow, give us a call (1-603-733-6568) or send email to contact@bettermultiphysics.com. With our help you will be quick on the target!
Are you looking for an energy- and cost-efficient deicing technology to deice a power-transmission line without interruption of power transmission? Or do you want to deice a large building, or a bridge? Or are you interested in instant deicing (in few seconds) of a car windshield? Do you want to make a footwear non-slipping on ice and snow? Are you interested in deicing of a power windmill or a solar panel? Do you want to build in a refrigerator a very energy- and instant defroster? If an answer to any of the questions above is “Yes”, then you can benefit from the services offered by Petrenko Multiphysics LLC!
We will:
If asked we will:
Aerospace, Buildings, Bridges, Cars, Trolleybuses, Trains, Windmills, Solar Panels
Aerospace, Buildings, Bridges, Ice-Makers, Evaporators
Transmission and distribution power lines
Transmission and distribution power lines
Refrigeration, Liquefied Gas production
Aerospace, Buildings, Bridge, Cars
Aerospace, Buildings, Bridge, Cars
De-icing is a process in which interfacial ice attached to an engineering structure is either broken or melted. Some sort of external force (gravity, wind-drag) then removes the ice from the surface of the structure. Mechanical deicers take less energy, but they don’t clean structures well leaving significant amounts of ice. They also may damage structures and accelerate ware. Thermal de-icing does the job well, but it takes too much electric (or other) energy. We have invented, developed and tested a new de-icing method, which significantly (sometimes in one hundred times) reduces the energy needed for deicing. In doing so, we mimic “an ideal” thermal deicer that takes an absolute minimum amount of energy. The ideal deicer should melt only a very thin layer of interfacial ice, leaving the temperature of the environment unchanged. But because in conventional deicers a heater is thermally connected to ice, to a protected structure, and to outside environment, large heat losses are inevitable. In a typical deicer the losses exceed by orders of magnitude the amount of “useful” heat that is used to melt interfacial ice.
A pulse deicer cuts these heat-drainage mechanisms by heating only a very thing interfacial layer during a very short pulse of 10 ms to 10 s long. Because of the short heating time, the heat does not propagate in the environment. Instead, it warms only an interfacial layer of ice increasing its temperature just above the ice melting point. The ice then slides off on the liquid film. The pulse deicer was successfully tested for de-icing airplanes, car windshields, bridge over-structures, metal walls, metal cables, glass roofs, etc. The deicer demonstrated almost instant action in combination with saving up to 99% of electric energy in comparison with conventional heaters.
To minimize power loss in transmission lines, their conductors are designed to be “cold”. While saving energy, this makes the conductors prone to icing and may result in break of the line conductors and possibly even collapse of the line towers. We invented and tested transmission/distribution line conductors which stay cold in normal power transmission operations, but switch to a hot-mode to either remove accumulated ice or to prevent ice formation. The technology is applicable to bundle conductors which have three or more conductors per phase (n ≥ 3). The VRC technology can also very efficiently prevent icing and/or remove ice from insulated conductors of distribution lines (V < 35kV). The switching from the normal power-transmission mode to the deicing power-transmission mode is performed by reconnecting the conductors in a bundle from parallel to series connections. The re-connection is done by a few small low-voltage solid state switches that are integrated into the conductor. When a line has only one conductor per phase we can do similar deicing job using
high-frequency VRC.
This deicing technology is very similar in its physics to the Pulse Electro-Thermal Deicing (PETD). It also almost instantly melts a very thin layer of interfacial ice and ice then slides off from a surface (roof, building, refrigeration evaporator, icemaker etc.). The difference is that to melt the ice/structure interface the thermal energy is slowly accumulated in a heat storage and then rapidly delivered to the ice/structure interface. Either a low-power power supply (such as a solar panel) or wasted heat is used as a source of the thermal energy. Compared to PETD, HSD takes either low-power or zero-power energy sources. Some examples are heat rejected in refrigerator condensers, solar energy and geothermal heat. The heat can be stored either in a tank of fluid or in a metal block or a sheet.
Melting a very thin layer of ice or snow may not only deice or defrost a surface of an engineering structure, but it can instantly bond a surface (of a tire, a shoe, a ski) to ice and snow. It happens when a liquid layer is instantly frozen in contact with a cold surface. By varying the heating pulse energy and duration we can rapidly freeze a surface to ice. The technology has been successfully tested on automotive tires, shoes and cross-country skis.
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