These tiny salt 'AT-ATs' may be wonderfully strange to look at, but they could also assist in a powerful service—helping unclog the pipes of power plants, a $100-billion-a-year expense. Learn more: StarWarsDay MayThe4thBeWithYou
Behold the salt monsters. These twisted mineral crystals—formed from the buildup of slightly salty water in power plant pipes—come in many shapes and sizes. But the tiny monsters are a big problem: Each year, they cost the world's power plants at least $100 billion because workers have to purge the pipes and scrub the crystals from filters.by coating the insides of the pipes with textured, water-repellant surfaces, a new study insuggests.
Surfaces textured with microscale gaps, micrometer-wide dips between tips of the surface, encourage the crystals to spread and flatten, making them tough to remove. If microscale gaps were the width of a cantaloupe, nanoscale gaps would be the width of a cherry. Surfaces textured with nanoscale gaps force the crystals to grow upward, resulting in funky shapes akin to miniature elephants and jellyfish that are much easier to remove from the pipes.