Biotechnological Anti Freezing Coating - BioAFC

Project summary

Ice formation on industrial machinery is one of the inevitable occurrences,which challenge the system performance and efficiency. Ice formation on working surfaces hinders energy efficiency and safety in many applications. BioAFC aims to employ natural occurring anti-freezing proteins (AFPs) to protect various industrial surfaces. Potential application could be mentioned as wings (aviation, pavements (transportation, and evaporators (refrigeration-the target of this project). The goal is to upscale from TRL2 to TRL5. We aim to use the genetically produced AFPs and characterize the anti-icing activities, to develop a facile coating method, and to optimize the coating process via novel acoustic surface monitoring technique. BioAFC will result in economic benefit for costumers and relevant industries and will offer 5% reduction in energy consumption (105K tons/yr of CO2 emission reduction). The output is new generation of biologically coating to accelerate the energy efficiency globally.