of the sea water than would be possible by the use of one or the other additive alone the utility of fluorochemical surfactants in construction of ice structures was evaluated in april 1984 during the 1983 1984 field season at an offshore floating ice platform located north of the 77th parallel in the nw territories the ice platform was in use as an oil exploration site by an energy development company and drilling was ongoing when the spray freezing experiments were conducted the ice platform consisted of an elliptical area of sea ice that had been thickened earlier in the season by a combination of spraying and flooding with sea water a surveyed grid was created for the field trials about two submersible pumps each equipped with motor driven rotatable nozzle assemblies experiments were performed under essentially identical conditions of air temperature wind velocity and direction and sea water pumping rate with and without surfctnat treatment the ambient air temperature averaged 13 degrees f this temperature is normally considered marginal for efficient production of ice from untreated sea water sprays treatment of sea water pumped at the rate of 350 to 450 gallons per minute with surfactant was accomplished using a high pressure metering pump the surfactant dosage level was adjusted to range between 30 to 40 ppm sea water spraying experiments were conducted for 2 to 3 hours at the conclusion of each spray experiment ice thicknesses were immediately obtained.