Abstract
Most studies on icephobicity focus on ice formation with pure water. This manuscript presents studies to understand the influence of surfaces on saltwater ice nucleation and propagation. Experiments are conducted to quantify the influence of surface chemistry on saltwater ice nucleation and to understand the utility of superhydrophobic surfaces for saltwater icephobicity. These experiments are conducted with pure water and two sodium chloride solutions, which represent the salinity of seawater and briny produced water. It is seen that the presence of salt slows down the ice front propagation velocity significantly. Saltwater droplet impact dynamics on superhydrophobic surfaces are also different from pure water. Saltwater droplets retract more and a greater fraction of impacting liquid is repelled from the superhydrophobic surface. It is seen that the greater bounciness of saltwater droplets is a result of slower ice nucleation propagation kinetics. These experiments indicate that superhydrophobic surfaces will have better resistance to impact icing with saltwater than pure water and can remain useful at temperatures as low as −40 °C. Overall, this work is a starting point for further studies on heterogeneous nucleation in saltwater and serves as a bridge between the widely studied freshwater icephobic surfaces and saltwater-related applications.
Highlights
A synopsis of the limited research on saltwater icing is presented below
We isolate the influence of surface chemistry on the heterogeneous nucleation kinetics of saltwater solutions by quantifying the ice nucleation temperatures and ice front propagation kinetics
We define a superhydrophobic surface as one that can completely repel water droplets under room temperature conditions. These experiments uncover the role of salt concentration on impact dynamics and quantify the effectiveness of superhydrophobic surfaces in repelling saltwater ice
Summary
A synopsis of the limited research on saltwater icing is presented below. Many studies have focused on the freezing point depression by salt addition[20]. We present experimental studies of saltwater freezing under static (stagnant water) and dynamic (liquid impact) conditions. After studying static freezing of saltwater solutions, we analyze impact dynamics of the three liquids on superhydrophobic surfaces.
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