Ice-phobic and durable coatings for the aerospace and energy sectors (ICELIP)

Icing represents a complex and expensive problem in different industrial and energy applications -- aircraft, wind turbines, power lines -- causing incidents and severe accidents. The main mitigation methods rely on mechanical breaking of the ice, electrical heating, and de-icing chemicals. These are expensive, inefficient, unreliable, and environmentally harmful.

The aim of the ICELIP project is to develop a passive ice-repellent coating which also provides adequate durability for aircraft applications. This will have impacts not only in aviation, but also in other sectors (other transport: rail, maritime, automotive, and energy: wind turbines, power lines). The main benefits include: increased safety by 4%, more environmentally friendly products (avoiding discharge of 100 million litres of de-icing fluids and cutting emissions of 80million tonnes of CO2 by reducing aircraft weight and, thus, fuel consumption), more cost-efficient products (saving £7bn/year in fuel), and improved energy efficiency (e.g. increasing wind energy production by 20%).

The ICELIP project is based on previous R&D work of part of the consortium, focused on the development of an ice-repellent coating comprising nano-additives incorporated in a standard aerospace clear coat. The coating system showed an outstanding combination of ice-repellency and durability (TRL 3-4) which will need further development and testing in order to be suitable for the aerospace market.