A feasibility study of self-heating concrete utilizing carbon nanofiber heating elements

This paper presents the development of an electric, self-heating concrete system that uses embedded carbon nanofiber paper as electric resistance heating elements. The proposed system utilizes the conductive properties of carbon fiber materials to heat a surface overlay of concrete with various admixtures to improve the concrete's thermal conductivity. The development and laboratory scale testing of the system were conducted for the various compositions of concrete containing, separately, carbon fiber, fly ash, and steel shavings as admixtures. The heating performances of these concrete mixtures with the carbon fiber heating element were experimentally obtained in a sub-freezing ambient environment in order to explore the use of such a system for deicing of concrete roadways. Analysis of electric power consumption, heating rate, and obtainable concrete surface temperatures under typical power loads was performed to evaluate the viability of a large scale implementation of the proposed heating system for roadway deicing applications. A cost analysis is presented to provide a comparison with traditional deicing methods, such as salting, and other integrated concrete heating systems.