Analysis of the relative supercooling enhancement of two emerging supercooling techniques
Ștefan-Ioan Câmpean,
George-Andrei Beșchea,
Alexandru Șerban,
Matthew J. Powell-Palm,
Boris Rubinsky,
Gabriel Năstase
Affiliations
Ștefan-Ioan Câmpean
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Department of Building Services, Transilvania University of Brasov, Brasov BV 500152, Romania
George-Andrei Beșchea
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Department of Building Services, Transilvania University of Brasov, Brasov BV 500152, Romania
Alexandru Șerban
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics, Thermotechnics, Engines, Thermaland Refrigeration Equipment Department, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest B 060042, Romania
Matthew J. Powell-Palm
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
Boris Rubinsky
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
Gabriel Năstase
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Department of Building Services, Transilvania University of Brasov, Brasov BV 500152, Romania
We present herein an experimental study on the ice-nucleation kinetics of two recently introduced aqueous supercooling modalities—oil-sealed isobaric supercooling and isochoric supercooling. A series of constant-cooling rate experiments compare the apparent nucleation temperatures of pure water supercooled under these modalities with conventional open-air isobaric supercooling, demonstrating that both methods significantly enhance the supercoolability of the system as compared to open-air supercooling. However, while the mean nucleation temperatures of the two methods are statistically comparable, isochoric supercooling displays approximately half the variability of isobaric oil-sealed supercooling, which may have important implications on the design of supercooling-based biopreservation protocols in which stability and reproducibility are paramount.
