Top-flight technology

If you’ve ever sat on an airplane after a long night of freezing temperatures, you know the special drill that awaits the crew and passengers before their aircraft can climb into the morning sky.

Lingering cold and precipitation cause a dangerous build up of snow and ice on an aircraft’s wings and fuselage. These icy layers can disrupt the smooth flow of air essential to maintaining the plane’s aerodynamic lift, and continue to be a major cause of plane crashes in winter climates.

The traditional de-icing strategy of the airline industry employs ethylene glycol technology. Crews spray a chemical similar to automobile radiator fluid on the planes from a series of crane-mounted nozzles. One treatment can use hundreds of gallons of glycol and cost $2,500. In addition to being time-consuming and often ineffective – sometimes requiring multiple treatments prior to takeoff – the procedure is highly labor-intensive and the chemical itself is a chronic pollution problem for airport grounds.

An Orchard Park, N.Y.-based company is using infrared heating technology – fueled by natural gas or propane – in a new airplane de-icing system designed to make commercial flights both fiscally and environmentally responsible. Similar to a giant car wash, the planes are moved through a special hangar as a series of gas-fired energy process units direct waves of heat to quickly melt away ice buildup.

“It’s sort a drive-through arrangement,” explains Tim Seel, who invented the InfraTek system and co-founded Radiant Energy Corp. in 1993. The company’s technology achieved approval from the Federal Aviation Administration in 1994 and the first installation to be test-piloted by commercial pilots was installed in 1997. Currently three U.S. airports use Radiant’s system fueled by natural gas. An InfraTek installation being built at Norway’s Oslo Airport Gardermoen runs on propane.

“We believe the InfraTek system will become the standard for aircraft de-icing systems worldwide,” says Radiant’s Robert Maier, vice president of sales and service.

Rather than relying on a fleet of costly glycol spray trucks, an array of gas-powered infrared Energy Processing Units (EPUs) mounted among a hangar’s trusses instantly begin to de-ice a plane. The electromagnetic waves are absorbed by ice and snow yet reflected by the aircraft’s surface.

According to Seel, a number of Radiant’s airline and airport sales prospects in the United States are looking into the propane application.

“Ten percent of the people are considering propane at this point,” says Seel, “and eventually you’ll see that 15 percent to 20 percent (of the domestic installations) will be propane.”

The operation in Norway is expected to use almost 200,000 gallons of propane each year while generating some 33 million BTUs of hangar-based heat. A three-day supply of propane is to be trucked onto airport property by Progas, an Oslo propane marketer, and stored in a 26,000-gallon tank.

“It looks like a fuel farm that you’d see over here for aviation fuel,” Seel says.

Airplanes simply taxi into the specially built facility where they are bathed in safe, infrared energy from overhead heaters controlled remotely by a single, on-site operator. Ice and snow quickly absorb the warming energy. The melting liquid falls off the aircraft and evaporates into clouds of vapor, leaving the plane dry before it departs the facility. During the process, the airplane’s surface reflects the heat, leaving the surface cooler than it would be on a warm summer day. As with conventional de-icing, passengers remain onboard during the process.

To reduce the amount of weight that would be mounted within the hangar’s trusses, narrow-gage black iron piping supports (at five pounds of pressure per square inch) an array of Energy Processing Units (EPUs) adjusted to a specific infrared electromagnetic wave length.

“EPUs are physically much smaller than conventional heating equipment,” says Seel, “and they allow for the delivery of a high concentration of energy where needed.”

With an energy density that is 10 times higher than conventional heating equipment, the focused and precisely targeted devices are able to melt dangerous ice and snow on the wings and fuselage without heating any of the aircraft’s aluminum components.

With the InfraTek system, six planes can be de-iced and ready for takeoff in an hour at a fuel cost of less than $200 per hour. The pilot system tested at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport serviced 6,500 planes in a year; the Norway installation is designed to annually service 16,000 planes.

The system was designed in concert with the Federal Aviation Administration’s Technical Center and the Office of Airport Safety and Standards. Startup costs for the infrared system range from $1 million to $1.7 million, but interested airports or airlines may be eligible for funds through the federal Airport Improvement Program and the Passenger Facility Charge initiative.

“Under Airport Improvement Plan funding, airports can apply for federal government funds of up to 75 percent to 90 percent of the total cost of eligible technology based on airport size,” says Seel, who also invites interested propane distributors to review potential opportunities in their area.

The airlines, with the approval of airport authorities, typically make the decision to implement the system. That can be a tough sell with various political and environmental hurdles to clear. “It’s not something that gets done instantaneously,” Seel concedes.

Still, an airline committed to embracing InfraTek often carries a lot of clout at the local airfield. “He who sits at the end of the runway pounds the biggest fist on the airport authority’s deck,” he observes.

Taking off

At Newark, Continental Airlines operates the InfraTek facility for de-icing its own aircraft and those of other air carriers. Continental and Radiant share revenues generated from a flat per-treatment fee based on the size of the plane. Glycol use is down some 85 percent, and airport officials report that the switch has thus far saved them from cleaning up and recovering about 350,000 gallons of waste glycol.

“The time and money savings, as well as the reduction in use of glycol and the improvements in working conditions for our ground crews, make this a very compelling solution,” observes Jim Ussery, assistant chief pilot for Newark’s Continental Airlines hub.

“This system is innovative, cost-effective and environmentally safe – a winning combination,” according to Frank Lautenberg, a since-retired U.S. senator who admired InfraTek’s natural gas facility at the Newark International Airport in Newark, N.J.

“This new method of de-icing will eliminate the harmful runoff into nearby waterways that chemicals currently used in de-icing can cause,” says U.S. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin. He credits the “cutting edge” technology with “saving money and preserving our environment” at the natural gas-fired InfraTek system in place at the Rhinelander-Oneida County Airport in his district.

“The key issue in de-icing is throughput,” says Ussery. “For an airline to be successful, you not only have to de-ice the aircraft very precisely, but you have to do it as fast as you can because we have to get the aircraft out on the runway. With InfraTek, we have exceeded our best expectations, and we’ve matched or exceeded what we do at the de-icing pad.”