| 
December 4, 2004
New
de-icing road mixture: Magic Salt
News Brief: The Union
Leader
Published on December 4, 2004
KEENE (AP) — The city Department of Public
Works is trying a new technique to make roads safer this winter,
using a solution that looks like coffee and smells like molasses:
"Magic Salt."
The special concoction is designed to melt ice and
snow faster and at lower temperatures than road salt, last longer
on the road and be less corrosive. It's also biodegradable.
It's also less expensive. Salt costs $40 a ton,
said Bruce Tatro, Keene highway superintendent, and Keene uses
about 5,000 tons per winter.
"Magic Salt" costs more, about $62 a ton,
but the city will probably only use about 2,200 tons, about $64,000
less.
The experiment is a first for Keene and for the
spraying company, N.H. Ice Melt of Manchester.
Tatro said Keene's road crews have already used
the "magic salt" twice. "It really worked,"
he said.
Scott Convery of N.H. Ice Melt said it's "like spraying Pam
on a frying pan," like a no-stick spray for streets. So when
plows clear off roads where the mixture has been used, there shouldn't
be any hard-packed snow or black ice left over.
On Thursday, about 125 tons of regular road salt
in the public works shed in Keene was hosed with a concoction
called "Magic-0," a brown liquid that is half magnesium
chloride and half throwaway products from, for example, a vodka
manufacturing plant.
Magic-0 is sprayed onto regular salt heaps from
a hose attached to a 220-gallon tank. The spray neutralizes the
salts corrosiveness, and the mixture becomes like a brine.
Then it gets worked over until it's a cinnamon-brown
color. Within 10 minutes, its ready to melt ice and snow in temperatures
as low as 35 degrees below zero. That's at least 50 degrees colder
than the temperature at which salt stops working.
Tatro said city crews usually would spread 800 pounds
of regular salt on the roads in 25-degree weather. More salt must
be spread when it gets down to 15 degrees. Beyond that, crews
have to spread sand to keep the streets passable.
The magic salt "saves crews from being out
at 2 a.m.," Tatro said. "When its done ahead of time,
we're not trying to play catch-up." |
