Society Awards and Honors
2008 Awards
Bill Samuels Shares ACS Regional Industrial Innovation Award
A new technology that de-ices planes and airport runways and pavements with less impact to the environment has garnered its development team the Regional Industrial Innovation award from the American Chemical Society.
The technology – D3: Degradable by Design Deicer – was created by a team of scientists from Battelle and PNNL. D3 is a family of non-toxic biodegradable fluids used to remove and prevent the formation of snow and ice on aircraft, airport runways, roads and pavement. It also can prevent snow from sticking to deiced surfaces, providing additional protection.
The team members are Bill Samuels, Fundamental and Computation Sciences Directorate; and Satya Chauhan, Nicholas Conkle and Melissa Roshon, Battelle.
D3 was developed to be more environmentally friendly and is manufactured primarily from bio-based materials. The award-winning deicing — EcoFlo for aircraft deicing/anti-icing and Battelle-RDF for runway pavement deicing/anti-icing — substantially reduce toxicity levels and potential environmental damage as well as corrosion of aircraft materials while providing the same performance and benefits of other commercial deicing products.
The technology is available for use by the military and commercial airlines for aircraft and runway deicing and also is potentially available for consumer deicing products. The evaluation of these products for military use was partially funded by two Defense Department programs — Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program and Environmental Security Technology Certification Program. D3 also received a 2004 R&D 100 Award for aircraft deicing/anti-icing as well as a 2008 R&D 100 Award for runway deicing/anti-icing.
(announced 7/16/2008)