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PETRENKO ON ICE: Petrenko in 2001 spun his research at Dartmouth off into a separate company (Ice Engineering, LLC) so he could focus on developing new ice-busting technologies. COURTESY OF CHRIS MILLIMAN
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?: Ice Engineering is also getting into the power line de-icing market with its variable-resistance cable technology, which Petrenko says will enable power utilities to swiftly remove ice from lines without need to shut down the lines and interrupt service. COURTESY OF QUEBEC HYDRO
COLD-WIRED: Electric transmission lines in Quebec buckle under thick ice coats, creating regional power outages. COURTESY OF QUEBEC HYDRO
DE-ICING THE DOME: Ice Engineering company designed a thin oxide film to create an electrically conductive and transparent surface that could be used to cover the Moscow City mall's glass dome. COURTESY OF JOERG HENKEL
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MOSCOW CITY'S ATRIUM: The Atrium in Moscow city (completed in December) includes a 107,639-square-foot (10,000-square-meter) glass dome roof. COURTESY OF JOERG HENKEL
ICE GETS ICED: Each steel cable is covered by a thin polymer tube to prevent rusting, which is in turn covered with stainless steel foil. "We apply [an] electric pulse to either end of the cable for about one second," Petrenko says, "and all ice attached to it falls down." COURTESY OF PER SIKSTROM
CABLED CHASM: The Uddevalla bridge is held together by 120 cables, each more than 655 feet (200 meters) long and 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) in diameter. COURTESY OF PER SIKSTROM
SPANNING SUNNINGE SOUND: The 5,617-foot- (1712-meter-) long Uddevalla bridge traverses the Sunninge Sound in western Sweden and features 489-foot- (149-meter-) tall pylons. COURTESY OF PER SIKSTROM
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SWEDEN'S UDDEVALLA CABLE BRIDGE One of Ice Engineering's biggest installations is the Uddevalla cable bridge in Sweden, where the technology has been in place since 2005. COURTESY OF PER SIKSTROM
DE-ICE DEVICE: Because ice is a proton semiconductor, unlike the electron semiconductors found in computers and other electronic devices, in principle you can make any electronic device run on ice, says Victor Petrenko, professor of engineering at Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering and a former research lab director at the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Solid State Physics. COURTESY OF WEATHERANSWER.COM
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