Keeping drivers safe with a road that can melt snow, ice on its own
Slipping and sliding on snowy or icy roads is dangerous. Salt and sand help melt ice or provide traction, but excessive use is bad for the environment.
And sometimes, a surprise storm can blow through before these materials can be applied.
Now, researchers have filled microcapsules with a chloride-free salt mixture that’s added into asphalt before roads are paved, providing long-term snow melting capabilities in a real-world test.
Driving on snowy roads at or near-freezing temperatures can create unsafe conditions, forming nearly invisible, slick black ice, if roads aren’t cleaned quickly enough. But the most common ways to keep roads clear have significant downsides:
- Regular plowing requires costly equipment, is labor intensive and can damage pavement.
- Heavy salt or sand applications can harm the environment.
- Heated pavement technologies are prohibitively expensive to use on long roadways.
Recently, researchers have incorporated salt-storage systems into “anti-icing asphalt” to remove snow and prevent black ice from forming. However, these asphalt pavements use corrosive chloride-based salts and only release snow-melting substances for a few years.
So, Yarong Peng, Quansheng Zhao, Xiaomeng Chu and colleagues wanted to develop a longer-term, chloride-free additive to effectively melt and remove snow cover on winter roads.
The researchers prepared a sodium acetate salt and combined it with a surfactant, silicon dioxide, sodium bicarbonate and blast furnace slag — a waste product from power plant operations — to produce a fine powder.
They then coated the particles in the powder with a polymer solution, forming tiny microcapsules. Next, the team replaced some of the mineral filler in an asphalt mixture with the microcapsules.
In initial experiments, a pavement block made with the new additive lowered the freezing point of water to -6 F. And the researchers estimated that a 5-cm-thick layer of the anti-icing asphalt would be effective at melting snow for seven to eight years.
A real-world pilot test of the anti-icing asphalt on the off-ramp of a highway showed that it melted snow that fell on the road, whereas traditional pavement required additional removal operations.
Because the additive used waste products and could release salt for most of a road’s lifetime, the researchers say that is a practical and economic solution for wintertime snow and ice removal.
See more here sciencedaily.com
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Howdy
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“Driving on snowy roads at or near-freezing temperatures can create unsafe conditions.”
It is how the conditions are navigated that defines the risk.
Driving on black ice carries no more risk than usual as long as one realizes the ice is there and proceeds appropriately. If there is a steep hill, find a way around.
Education is key, and preferably administered by oneself so it sticks. The black ice makes it’s presence known by light steering and reduced road noise.
Be aware of driving over a highway ‘flyover’ after traversing solid carriageway, as it is likely that section could be solid ice surface. That sort of thing.
It is in your own interests to do so.
“The researchers prepared a sodium acetate salt and combined it with a surfactant, silicon dioxide, sodium bicarbonate and blast furnace slag”
“Because the additive used waste products and could release salt for most of a road’s lifetime”
Since this substance will be present every time the road surface becomes wet, where are the results on corrosion of steel vehicle bodies, aluminium, corroded and locked thread fasteners etc?
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VOWG
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Just being alive is apparently bad for the environment. Time shut these people down, permanently before they destroy all of humanity.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I commonly miss-type so I don’t know if the author of this article made a mistake where I read: “In initial experiments, a pavement block made with the new additive lowered the freezing point of water to -6 F. And the researchers estimated that a 5-cm-thick layer of the anti-icing asphalt would be effective at melting snow for seven to eight years.”
I am a long time American Chemical Society (ACS) member and I am very embarrassed by this which I read.
I know that all the salt ever mined and placed on roads to melt snow and solid crystalline ice would not lower “the freezing point of water to -6 F”. And I know that the claim—that a 5-cm-thick layer of the anti-icing asphalt would be effective at melting snow for seven to eight years—has not yet been established by any testing.
Have a good day
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Moffin
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Hi Jerry. Maybe these people are alchemists, not scientists. 🙂
Could it be they turned water into wine and are now ‘pissed as newts’. (intoxicated).
Cheers cobber.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Moffin,
If one studies the history of the alchemists you will find that their experimental results not only gave us the atom, but also made aqua regia (which my spell checker doesn’t know how to spell) which dissolves gold as described by Galileo in Two New Sciences. Too bad so many do not know historical facts.
Have a good day
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Moffin
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Hi Jerry. Thank you for that.
‘Newts’ was the name given to new recruits in the Royal Navy and a tot of rum would get many of them inebriated.
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Saighdear
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(Slag) a waste product from power plant operations …. so soon this MAY no longer be available, … and then ?
a 5-cm-thick layer of the anti-icing asphalt would be effective at melting snow for seven to eight years.” – does this mean that 2″ of surface will be eroded in that time scale ?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Saighdear,
Slag is the impurities resulting from the production of steel while fly ash is the waste product of coal power generation. With going green maybe they can find a way to make this new asphalt from dead birds and whales.
Herb
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