Anti-fouling interfaces for energy applications
type: CreativeWork
description: Fouling and accretion have negative impacts on a plethora of industrial processes. This doctoral thesis focuses on the theoretical and experimental exploration of mitigation strategies for heterogeneous nucleation of foulants. The dissertation covers low-temperature precipitation fouling, corrosion fouling, fuel fouling, and high-temperature scale fouling. We begin the thesis by providing a literature review of previously conducted work and understanding that has been established about multiple fouling mechanisms and conditions for a plethora of applications. We first study precipitation fouling. Classical nucleation theory dictates that in order to reduce the heterogeneous nucleation rate of a foulant, the surface should have a low surface energy and be as smooth as possible. Past approaches have focused on lowering surface energy via the use of hydrophobic coatings, or creating atomically smooth interfaces to eliminate nucleation sites, or both, via the infusion of low surface energy lubricants into rough superhydrophobic substrates. Although lubricant-based surfaces are promising candidates for anti-scaling, lubricant drainage inhibits their utilization. Here, we develop methodologies to deposit slippery omniphobic covalently attached liquids (SOCAL) on arbitrary substrates. Similar to lubricant-based surfaces, SOCAL has ultra-low roughness and surface energy, enabling low nucleation rates, and eliminating the need to replenish the lubricant. To enable SOCAL coating on metals, we investigated the surface chemistry required to ensure high quality functionalization as measured by ultra-low contact angle hysteresis (< 2). Using a multi-layer deposition approach, we first electrophoretically deposit (EPD) silicon dioxide (SiO2) as an intermediate layer between the metallic substrate and SOCAL. The necessity of EPD SiO2 is smoothen (< 10 nm roughness) as well as to enable the proper surface chemistry for SOCAL bonding. To characterize anti-scaling performance, we uti…
abstract: Fouling and accretion have negative impacts on a plethora of industrial processes. This doctoral thesis focuses on the theoretical and experimental exploration of mitigation strategies for heterogeneous nucleation of foulants. The dissertation covers low-temperature precipitation fouling, corrosion fouling, fuel fouling, and high-temperature scale fouling. We begin the thesis by providing a literature review of previously conducted work and understanding that has been established about multiple fouling mechanisms and conditions for a plethora of applications. We first study precipitation fouling. Classical nucleation theory dictates that in order to reduce the heterogeneous nucleation rate of a foulant, the surface should have a low surface energy and be as smooth as possible. Past approaches have focused on lowering surface energy via the use of hydrophobic coatings, or creating atomically smooth interfaces to eliminate nucleation sites, or both, via the infusion of low surface energy lubricants into rough superhydrophobic substrates. Although lubricant-based surfaces are promising candidates for anti-scaling, lubricant drainage inhibits their utilization. Here, we develop methodologies to deposit slippery omniphobic covalently attached liquids (SOCAL) on arbitrary substrates. Similar to lubricant-based surfaces, SOCAL has ultra-low roughness and surface energy, enabling low nucleation rates, and eliminating the need to replenish the lubricant. To enable SOCAL coating on metals, we investigated the surface chemistry required to ensure high quality functionalization as measured by ultra-low contact angle hysteresis (< 2). Using a multi-layer deposition approach, we first electrophoretically deposit (EPD) silicon dioxide (SiO2) as an intermediate layer between the metallic substrate and SOCAL. The necessity of EPD SiO2 is smoothen (< 10 nm roughness) as well as to enable the proper surface chemistry for SOCAL bonding. To characterize anti-scaling performance, we uti…
author: Zhao, Hanyang
language: en
keywords: fouling, heat transfer, sol-gel, scaling
date published: 2022-01-12T22:51:34Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:53Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/113240