A new anti-icing scheme for wind turbine blades: lower cost and higher efficiency

CTOnews.com, December 7 (Xinhua)-- the blades of wind turbines need to operate without ice, but as the weather gets colder, how to remove ice cheaply and effectively is a difficult problem for wind farm operators.

Wind turbines are mainly faced with two problems in de-icing, one is that the blades need to slow down the running speed and reduce the energy generated after accumulating too much ice, and the other is that the ice accumulated by the blades is uneven, causing the turbine to lose balance and increase wear and tear, and may even cause catastrophic failures.

Wind farm operators have two solutions, one is a built-in heating system, and the other is to use helicopters to apply anti-icing chemicals, but both are expensive.

The German Fraunhofer research team launched the TURBO project, which uses drones to spray anti-icing chemicals to bring more efficient solutions.

The research team has been continuously optimized to use a six-rotor UAV in the final version, equipped with a small pump to transport urea / antifreeze from the airborne tank to a slender nozzle.

The liquid is ejected from the nozzle of the gun (only 0.3 mm wide) at high pressure, producing tiny droplets 100 microns in diameter.

CTOnews.com learned from the report that the team had been optimized to fly accurately even at winds of up to 35km / h (22mph), coating atomized droplets on the ice-prone edges of wind turbine blades.