Development 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 nanofibers 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 will be presented for the various compositions of concrete containing, separately, carbon fiber, fly ash, and steel shavings as admixture. Thermal conductivity and heating performance of each concrete mixture were experimentally determined. The heating performance of these concrete mixtures with the carbon fiber heating element was experimentally obtained in a sub-freezing ambient environment 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 will be performed to evaluate the viability of a large scale implementation of the proposed heating system for roadway deicing applications. A cost analysis will be presented to provide comparison with traditional deicing methods, such as salting, and other integrated concrete heating systems.