Roll‐to‐roll printed carbon nanotubes on textile substrates as a heating layer in fiber‐reinforced epoxy composites

Abstract

The performance of wind turbines suffers from icing in regions with extreme climate. One approach is to incorporate heating elements into the most susceptible areas of the wind turbine blade as protection against icing and for de‐icing. Cost‐efficient and reproducible fabrication, as well as easy integration is important due to the large area of wind turbine blades. In this work, multi‐walled carbon nanotubes are applied on a 50% poly(ethylene terephthalate) and 50% polyamide non‐woven textile substrate by rotary‐screen printing. The printed layers function as resistive heating elements in a fiber‐reinforced composite. The heating areas are provided with flexographic or screen inline‐printed silver‐electrodes and can be integrated by means of vacuum infusion into a glass fiber‐reinforced epoxy composite laminate. These laminates, which are connected to an intelligent electrical control system, are suitable for melting ice on the surface of components or for preventing the formation of ice. The first promising experiments on heating structures in a rotor blade of a wind turbine at laboratory scale (2 m length) are the basis of studies on intelligent electrical control of heating structures and their behavior at different temperatures. The heating elements were able to melt a 3–4 mm thick ice layer within 25 min in a climate chamber at −5 °C. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018, 135, 45950.

Smart Textile‐Based Personal Thermal Comfort Systems: Current Status and Potential Solutions

“…Active PTCS can be implemented by using a variety of technologies such as liquid cooling integrated into textiles, [77,[392][393][394] electrocaloric cooling, [395][396][397] magnetocaloric cooling, [398][399][400][401] TE temperature regulation, [402][403][404][405][406] and Joule heating devices. [78,79,[407][408][409][410][411][412] Technologies such as Joule heating and TEs are relatively easier to implement into textile structures, whereas others such as liquid cooling can be cumbersome and bulky for ordinary textiles, and magnetocaloric and electrocaloric cooling, are emerging technologies currently available mainly in flexible film form. On the other hand, TE cooling is This article is protected by copyright.…”

“…63 409] and graphene, [79,420] metallic nanowires (NWs), [78,415,418] and conducting polymers, [410,411,421,422] as well as composites of these materials. [423][424][425][426][427][428] Metallic NWs are well-suited materials for creating PTCS fabrics due to the benefit of having low sheet resistivity without sacrificing the wearability and breathability of the fabric.…”

Printed Thin-Film Transistors: Research from China

“…Except for polymer films, textile is also applied in printable and flexible electronic. − Tian et al reported all inkjet-printed TFTs on PET and textile substrates with the heterojunction based on graphene semiconductor layer and hexagonal-boron nitride (h-BN) dielectric layer. The inkjet-printed TFTs with Ag S/D/G electrodes on PET and PEDOT:PSS S/D/G electrodes on textile were realized, reaching a mobility of ∼91 cm 2 V –1 s –1 at bias voltage of 5 V. The TFTs on textile could sustain up to ∼4% strain and be bent with the radius of 4 mm .…”

Carbon Nanotube Wind Turbine Blades: How Far Are We Today from Laboratory Tests to Industrial Implementation?

“…The highly aligned CNT web was characterized by a negligible weight, uniform heating, efficient energy consumption, and rapid antiicing/deicing. Fischer et al 103 prepared a CNT layer on a nonwoven substrate and covered it by a GF layer. For this antiicing system, the ice layer of thickness 3−4 mm could be completely removed within less than 0.5 h at −5 °C.…”