Novel Polymeric Coating to Minimize Frost Buildup on Critical Components

Elemental Coatings is developing the next generation of anti-icing and frost protection for applications in aerospace, energy infrastructure, industrial applications, and transportation. Heat exchangers, which are common pieces of equipment in a number of applications, must properly manage frost buildup in order to function correctly. Frost negatively impacts heat exchanger efficiency, and thus reductions in frost can lead to significant efficiency improvements and increased uptime. In aircraft, many of these issues are even more difficult to manage, due to the volumes of air involved, the substantial temperature differentials that exist in flight environments, and high air velocities. As a result, a frost-minimizing coating for this application needs to demonstrate several key properties: (1) ability to limit condensed droplets from freezing in the first place, (2) for those droplets that do freeze, the ability to quickly shed those ice crystals, (3) high thermal conductivity (to preserve heat exchanger efficiency), (4) ability to survive the challenging environmental conditions, (5) ability to evenly and cost-effectively coat complicated geometries.  To date, passive anti-icing and anti-frosting coatings have been researched by a number of academic groups and companies. Elemental Coatings has a strong, multi-year history in developing such coatings, and we believe that we currently have the most proven anti-icing coating in the world. It has already flown on a UAV as part of a NASA mission, and it is currently deployed on operational wind turbines in North America. These coatings are very effective at limiting the total extent of ice buildup, which is of course important, but they are not developed to the point where they eliminate ice and/or frost buildup altogether. Building off Elemental Coatings’ deep expertise around anti-icing coatings, this Phase I effort will explore a novel concept for anti-frosting coatings that entirely or almost entirely prevent frost formation. Specifically, we will create hybrid coatings with glycol-absorbing elements that simultaneously reduce the number of potential nucleation sites for ice crystals, lower the effective freezing temperature of water, allow water to quickly shed the surface (high hydrophobicity), and reduce the strength of ice adhesion to the surface. The base portion of the award will involve a fast-paced examination of multiple candidate formulations, and the option phase will then involve a deeper dive into the chosen approach to characterize all critical properties of the coating and demonstrate its technical viability as an effective anti-frosting coating for aircraft heat exchangers.