The Slurry-HP II project provided the first steps towards the development of a supercooling heat exchanger that can be used as evaporator in heat pumps for solar ice-slurry heating applications. A solar ice-slurry system is a particular case of a solar-ice system with the main difference that no heat exchangers are present in the ice storage when the slurry concept is applied. This is expected to reduce installation cost by approximately 10 %. Although our idea was originated to provide heating

more »

... demands to residential buildings, the concept of supercooling ice slurry and the methods developed in this project can be applied for residential, commercial and industrial refrigeration, too. The specific objectives of the present project were: i) find the most promising currently available icephobic coatings that could delay ice formation ii) develop a methodology to characterize icephobic coatings for underwater applications and iii) analyse the freezing point depression (degree of supercooling) and its stability as a function of coating, fluid velocity and temperature of the coated surface. Within the project we aimed to find the most promising available icephobic coatings developed for atmospheric conditions and assess them for supercooling applications. Thus, a key question for us was: How will coatings developed for atmospheric conditions perform when immersed in water and submitted to forced convection? To try to answer this question, we developed a methodology to characterize icephobic coatings with the goal to select the best candidates to be used in future supercoolers. During the project another question arose: Are state-of-the-art testing methods for atmospheric conditions enough and reliable to characterize coatings for immersed applications with a fluid in motion?