Airplanes are usually defrosted by spraying them with antifreeze.
Jaromir Chalabala / Alamy
Static electricity can remove up to three-quarters of surface frost, which can save enormous amounts of energy and millions of tons of antifreeze currently used to defrost vehicles.
In 2021 Jonathan Boreyko at Virginia Tech and colleagues discovered by luck this frost naturally becomes charged as it forms. They used this natural electric field to charge a nearby film of water, which could then pluck ice crystals from the frost, acting as a natural deicer. However, this effect was minor and had little effect on the frost overall.
Now Boreyko and his team have developed a more efficient defrosting system using an extremely high-voltage copper electrode suspended above frosted glass or copper. This system can remove half the frost from a surface in about 10 to 15 minutes, and can also remove 75 percent of the frost if the surface is highly water-repellent. “Instead of taking advantage of the already existing frost tension, we try to enhance the entire effect by applying our own tension,” says Boreyko.
To remove 50 percent of frost from a surface using their method required an electrode charged to 550 volts, more than double the voltage supplied to electrical grids in most countries. However, unlike electrical sockets, the electrode has a vanishingly small current, making it relatively safe. Accidentally touching the electrode can result in an electrical shock comparable to an electric fence used on farms, Boreyko said.
This small current also ensures that it requires little energy, less than half the energy needed to directly heat the frost, Boreyko says.
Besides its potential use in car windows and on roads, the fast and efficient defrosting method could also be useful in the aviation industry, which uses vast amounts of antifreeze to protect aircraft wings from ice that can affect flight performance.
“Instead of pouring hundreds of liters of antifreeze on the wing of an airplane to de-ice it while taxiing, instead you have a machine that can drive around airport runways using an electric pointer, and when you wave a high-voltage pointer over the wing, it just pulls off all that ice and snow,” Boreyko says.
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