A new study has found a way to remove ice from surfaces using an extremely energy-efficient method.A group of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Kyushu University developed the way by using less than 1 per cent of the energy and less than 0.01 per cent of the time needed for traditional defrosting methods.The group described the method in the journal Applied Physics Letters from AIP Publishing.Instead of conventional defrosting, which melts all the ice or frost from the top layer down, the researchers established a technique that melts the ice where the surface and the ice meet, so the ice can simply slide off."The work was motivated by the large energy efficiency losses of building energy systems and refrigeration systems due to the need to do intermittent defrosting. The systems must be shut down, the working fluid is heated up, then it needs to be cooled down again," said author Nenad Miljkovic, at UIUC."This eats up a lot of energy when you think of .
