Ice Adhesion Issues in Renewable Energy Infrastructure

Renewable resources supply only a small fraction of global energy demand. The majority of today's energy is supplied by fossil fuels. The capacity of fossil fueled facilities to produce power is not as location dependent as renewable energy sources. Many mainstream renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydrokinetic must be located where the appropriate natural resources are most abundant. Unfortunately, some of the most energy abundant sites for renewable installations (high winds, strong sea currents) are located where climactic conditions are severe and icing is prevalent. This is significant, as many renewable resources can be substantially or completely incapacitated by icing events. This is not the case for coal, natural gas, or nuclear facilities. As the global proportion of renewable energy infrastructure increases, dealing with icing issues will become more critical. In this paper, the impact of icing on current renewable energy resources is discussed. Renewable resources are categorized based on their icing conditions. Some comparison is made among these categories to explore how different icing conditions may impact potential ice mitigation schemes. It is shown that each of the atmospheric, gas turbine and submarine environments all pose icing challenges that require mostly active, energy-intensive deicing solutions. Such active solutions are those that require significant energy input to be operational and effective (e. g., heaters, shakers, etc.). Also, in the interest of optimizing renewable energy reliability and efficiency, robust and passive systems should be pursued. Passive solutions do not require additional energy input during operation to be effective (e. g., coatings, surface treatments). Such solutions will capitalize on surface-engineering and will be based on adhesion science principles. (C) Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012