This article was written as part of The Michigan Daily’s investigation to better understand the risks, advancements and future of water in Michigan and beyond. Read other stories from the project here.
As engineers continue to utilize water to create new advancements in the field, researchers at the University of Michigan College of Engineering have begun a $11.4 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-funded project, called IceCycle, aimed at revolutionizing how humans interact with ice and cold environments. Researchers created developments aimed at improving energy efficiency and increasing infrastructure durability, such as membranes to increase the energy efficiency of oil-water separation and coatings that reduce fuel usage of ships attempting to overcome the ocean’s drag.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Anish Tuteja, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the lead investigator for the IceCycle project, said he and his team have been working on developing different coatings that allow for the easy shedding of ice to prevent unwanted ice build-up.
“This comes from the idea that there’s many molecules in nature, or many organisms in nature, that can survive in very cold climates,” Tuteja said. “So there’s various wood frogs and beetles, where you can go down to minus 40 degrees celsius and their blood does not freeze. And the thought came about: Can we actually identify the molecules that allow this to happen and actually make them into functional materials that can then be utilized for all sorts of different applications?”
Abdon Pena-Francesch, assistant professor of materials science and engineering who also worked on the project, told The Daily one of the biggest challenges when working with ice is controlling it as a variable, since ice comes in multiple forms including glaze, solid ice and snow, depending on the humidity and temperature. This creates challenges for experts in the field to design surfaces to accommodate different forms of ice.
“Doing research with a complex material that depends a lot on its environment, it’s very challenging to get consistent and trustable results,” Pena-Francesch said. “Also, how you can recreate these conditions in a lab setting is quite challenging.”
In an email to The Daily, Rackham student Qiming Li wrote there were many challenges to working with ice in creating, designing and testing new materials and technologies to manipulate ice formation. Li wrote the process of manipulating ice can be challenging due to the quick moisture absorption of materials, which may compromise the chemical properties of ice.
“One of the biggest challenges is controlling humidity — both in synthesis and testing,” Li wrote. “During synthesis, our materials are highly hygroscopic (they absorb moisture quickly), which complicates the process. While strong hydration behavior is beneficial for anti-icing, removing excess water from the product can be difficult.”
Pena-Francesch said the team performed multiple tests in Tuteja’s lab to see how fast ice can form and to see how it could be applied to a variety of different usages.
“We have two different main tests,” Pena-Francesch said. “One is on how we can control how fast ice forms. … Or, how we can push that freezing temperature as low as possible. This is something that we’re interested in using for medicines, for drinking water, for the icing fluids, for the roads or for airplanes, things like this — how we can bring that freezing temperature down and delay the formation of ice.”
Li expanded on future research that can be performed from the findings of the IceCycle project. According to Li, the use of zwitterionic polymers, polymers that contain both positive and negative charge in their structure, while maintaining overall neutral charge, enable high-hydration behavior. These polymers help attract and retain water maintaining their durability in harsh environments which can be used for medical treatments.
“Zwitterionic polymers could be a promising solution for cryopreservation, which could help to improve organ transportation by preventing ice damage,” Li said. “Additionally, based on zwitterionic polymer intrinsic hydration behavior, these materials could be used in anti-biofouling applications, such as drug delivery, bacterial resistance, medical diagnostics, and anti-marine organism fouling.”
Pena-Francesch emphasized water and water research are essential for improving all communities’ quality of life.
“I think understanding these very complex water materials is really giving us different ways where we can make these extreme, cold habitats more habitable and improve the quality of life of the local communities living there too,” Pena-Francesch said.
Daily Staff Reporter Emma Sulaiman can be reached atemmasul@umich.edu.
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