Investigation of coatings and metallic materials for icephobic properties

This report summarizes the results of the activities related to coatings and metallic materials with icephobic or
ice depressing capabilities within the H2020 European project “TRI-HP”. The overall goal of the TRI-HP project is
the development of trigeneration systems based on electrically driven natural refrigerant heat pumps coupled with
renewable electricity generators (PV). The systems are aiming to provide heating, cooling and electricity to multifamily
residential buildings with a self-consumed renewable share of 80 %. One of the systems developed is based
on a supercooling ice slurry heat pump. A successful development of such as system relies on the development of
a heat exchanger that can supercool water to temperatures around −2 °C to −3 °C without forming ice, the so-called
supercooler. This report summarizes the development and testing results of surfaces and materials to produce
these supercoolers.
In order to achieve the goals of the proposed activities different technological solutions based on metallic materials,
surface treatments and coatings have been developed and tested. These solutions aim to improve the
performance of supercooling heat exchangers by avoiding the nucleation of ice on the surface of the supercooling
heat exchanger and preventing its blockage.
Three main targets were dened at the initial stage: rst, development of coatings for preventing/delaying ice formation
that could be applied on already existing heat exchangers (supercoolers); second, to identify bulk material
for preventing/delaying ice formation to be used for constructing new heat exchangers (supercoolers); third, to
validate the icephobic functionality of coatings and bulk materials for continuous supercooled water ows.
Regarding the required icephobic performance, the focus was the ability of the new coatings and materials to lower
the freezing temperature (freeze depression). Ideally, the TRI-HP solutions should enable a stable subcooling
degree of 2-3 K.