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The Severity Of De-Icing In Airports

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In winter, the snow can be a hassle but the ice is what can be more challenging. Imagine how challenging it can be for an airport when dealing with the ice on not only the tarmacs but the planes as well. Airports have been using the same de-icing method for a while now, but it is not the most efficient way out there, nor is it the cheapest. There are a few reasons why aircrafts must be de-iced before take off in order to ensure that the aircraft is safe to fly. The current solution to de-ice an aircraft is inefficient and rather expensive, while there is a much better way to complete the process. Who wouldn't want their airport to run smoother and have flights in and out quicker? “De-Icing an aeroplane is tedious. Just ask any passenger stuck …show more content…

Ethylene Glycol is sometimes used on aircraft de-icing in some parts of the world because it has a lower operational use temperature than the more common Propylene Glycol. Propylene Glycol is more common because it is classified as non-toxic, unlike Ethylene Glycol. Even though it is classified non-toxic it still must be used with a containment system to capture the used liquid, so that it can't enter into the ground and water courses. Even though the classification is non-toxic, it has negative side effects in plants and water, since it uses oxygen during breakdown, causing aquatic life to suffocate by removing the O in H2O. “In one case, a significant snow in Atlanta in early January 2002 caused an overflow of such a system, briefly contaminating the Flint River downstream of the Atlanta airport” (In text citation – author year). A large amount of airports use recycled de-icing fluid, which is done by dividing the water and solid contaminants. This reusing of the de-icing fluid is done because it is an expensive process as, “The traditional deicing facilities were taking as long as an hour to an hour and a half and spraying between 3,000 and 5,000 gallons of glycol, at a cost of about $10 per gallon, to deice a single 747...” (In text citation – author year). That …show more content…

It is one of the top entry points to North America, and with that being said, one would assume they will need to be efficient, cost effective, and fast in almost everything that they do; which they are. Right down to the small detail that often goes unnoticed of de-icing an aircraft. At JFK they have bought into a new system, a much better system. This system uses infrared technology to heat the airplane before takeoff, “Designed and built by Radiant Aviation Services, a US-based wholly-owned subsidiary of the Canadian company Radiant Energy Corporation, the patented InfraTek system relies almost entirely on IR, which lies just to the right of the visible spectrum, to deice aircraft” (In text citation – author year). The process is quite simple, taxi the airplane to what seems to be a big open hanger, and sit there for a little bit until they are cleared for takeoff and the ice has melted. The program has had times noted of ranging between 28 minutes to 43 minutes for a full block, which is the time from brakes on the brake off (boarding to takeoff). Comparing that to the hour or hour and a half it takes to de-ice a plane in the conventional way, this seems like a better system already just based on the amount of time it takes to do the job. Toronto Pearson has rivalled that by building a massive de-icing facility where they can de-ice 11 planes at once, and have another 11

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