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De-Icing with Electricity, Not Heat
danspalding writes: "The New York Times has this article about using eletricity against ice. Turns out ice creates a reverse charge in whatever it binds to, and that that charge can be neutralized. Battery-powered ice cream scoopers can't be far behind."
Ice is just a form of water...so wouldn't electricity and ice form some horrible effect?
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"Ice is one of the unusual semiconductors in which electrical charges are conducted by moving protons instead of electrons. It was that property of ice that particularly intrigued Dr. Petrenko."
On a chemical level, how do protons shift the atom that they are part of the nucleus of? Is there a special property of crystals that makes this happen or is it just ice that does this?
Any information would be, well, informative...
I'm a concientious
H+ = a proton
Only the H+ ion has to move, not an entire atom.
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Another difficult problem with ice is not only with tires and airplane wings -- it is with the roads one walks on. Having skidded my way to classes more than once (walking on paved pathways) I would be very interested if they could develop this technology as a "film." The relative cost savings for both car windshields, and snow plows would be insane. You probably could also charge people fees to watch "popcorn snow." Imagine the snow/ice bouncing off your driveway, visibly. This would definetly be something I would like to see.
University of Illinois has a very good article (with pictures!) about Proton conduction, proton channels, proton wells on water.
This page about Victor Petrenko, a little more technical than Slashdot's article
This one is brief, but says: "PROTONIC CHIPS NEVER FORGET Researchers at the University of New Mexico and Sandia National Laboratories are investigating the use of protonic memory for making cheap forget-me-not computer chips. In 1995, they noticed during experiments on silicon wafers that protons deep within the wafers were responding to electrical signals on the surface. "Nobody had seen these moving protons before," says one scientist. Further research showed the protons can be precisely controlled with standard microcircuits -- and are thus able to store data. Protonic chips won't need the fancy processing used in "flash" and other so-called nonvolatile memory chips, and can operate at very low power levels, thus prolonging battery life in laptops. Protonic chips currently are being tested at Texas Instruments.
This PDFexplains the Mechanism of proton diffusion in the solid state protonic conductor Rb3H(SeO4)2, wich I assume is somewhat equivalent to the ice (haven't read the whole article yet) This
First, isn't it just easier to use an electric heater to melt ice?
Also, when the H20 and O2 ignite, wont the explosion send shards of ice flying? I would imagine that a shattered plate of ice would act similar to glass, and be jus as dangerous...unless i'm being stupid and the ice all melts
Otherwise, it's brilliant...
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
There's a detailed description and diagrams here. The process is referred to as the Grotthuss "hop-turn" mechanism.
Kind of like the old-style ski turns, though I think those are called stem-christies. (OK, it makes more sense if you've read the article and looked at their little sidebar image...)
it's informative !
Dr. Petrenko won a 2000 Discover award from the magazine by the same name for this very thing. It's listed under 'Aerospace.'
What are we talking about here "prototricity" instead of electricity? Or does ice conduct electricity? If so, do the protons all flow out of the ice and become replaced with electrons or what!?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/21/technology/circu its/21NEXT.html For those of you who don't want to register. Always substitute 'archive' for the 'www'.
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On an off-topic note, it was weird that this article wasn't on the front page of
I wonder what's going on with that, I've noticed a lot of stories miss the front page, and i notice these articles later with very few comments. Something in Slashcode is screwed up I suppose.
</ponder>
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
There's already lots of ways already to melt ice away. For those of us who live up north, there's commercial heaters to get snow and ice off your roof and off your driveway. Just do a Google search with "melt ice driveway roof":
a patent (not very technical)
winter tips from Urban Ideas
HeatIzOn
(and many others...)
Can this tech be put in reverse and cause skates/skis to have less friction? You would have skis and skates that would slide easier resulting in faster times in races etc.
Maybe even a way to replace lubricants in bearings and moving parts?
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819