Mar 29, 2010

Develop a new method for making artificial snow more sustainable and economic

Albert Verdaguer and other researchers of the Small Molecules on surfaces group at CIN2 (CSIC-ICN) are developing a new approach that would allow snowmaking more economical and sustainable through a perfect ice nucleating.

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What makes this nucleating be an almost ideal tool to make snow is that it is a system that allows modifications and adaptations as conditions and needs, that both the technology needed to make the particles as the coating molecules has already been used in many fields such as cosmetics, and technology, and already developed, and it is a safe and sustainable, because the particles used are in the natural environment, are safe and not pollutants. The molecules are easily degraded by solar action and are also in the air we breathe and within our own body.

The research process begins with the study of the structure of water on the surface of different materials. There are materials that attract water and are easily wetted (hydrophilic), other cost repel water and wetting (hydrophobic). All around us hydrophilic materials have a thin layer of water on its surface. In some materials this is liquid water, in others as ice. There are materials with a surface that has a structure characteristic that when the water wets this surface does not remain a liquid, but forms a very thin layer of ice, even at 25 ° C. These materials are ideal as ice nucleating induce the formation of ice crystals from microscopic water droplets at temperatures near 0 º C. Microscopic particles of these materials are used to induce rain or snow making.

All these materials form small ice on its surface, but to form ice crystals takes more dimensional. Today, they can design and build molecules that promote the growth of three-dimensional ice, while also forming surfaces with special features for the soaking water to form ice. Nucleating is made from micro-and nanoparticles of mineral contaminants  as those constituting the sand, which are harmless. Coating these particles with the aforementioned nucleating molecule, the additive would be ready to facilitate the formation of snow.

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