Influence of Salinity on the Mechanism of Surface Icing: Implication to the Disappearing Freezing Singularity

The effect of salinity on surface icing has been investigated experimentally. Water droplets with a variable salinity are deposited on a cold polished copper substrate. Distinctive two-stage freezing, which can be seen in case of pure water, is not observed in heterogeneous freezing of saltwater droplets. Interestingly, the final freezing stage commences before the initial freezing front completely traverses the saline droplet. A considerable increase in delay for heterogeneous ice nucleation is observed with the increasing salinity. The reduction in the associated degree of metastability due to the depression in the freezing point of the bulk solution and the increase in the nucleation barrier due to the appearance of the solvation shells that are formed around the ions are two possible causes of this nucleation delay. Moreover, the solidification time associated with surface icing increases considerably with the increasing salinity. Because of the insolubility of salt in ice, the salt ions are rejected to the entrapped water in the ice scaffold locally and to the bulk unfrozen water explicitly. This collective implicit and explicit modes of brine rejection contributes to the overall slowdown of freezing of the saline water droplets. From the phase diagram, it can be found that the complete solidification of water within the saline droplet is not possible when the substrate temperature is in between the eutectic temperature and the equilibrium freezing temperature. As a result, the relative magnitude of tip singularity during freezing reduces considerably with the increasing salinity due to the increase in unfrozen water content within the droplet.