HRM testing liquid form of salt for winter road-clearing
Posted Jan 13, 2012 05:21:20 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The latest burst of winter weather gave HRM a perfect chance to try out a new road clearing tactic.
The city is testing the use of brine on roads, which means spraying the roads with salt water before ice or snow can form.
Gord Hayward, HRM’s superintendent of winter works, tells News 95.7 the liquid brine works a little faster than conventional dry salt.
“It couples with the snow and goes through a chemical reaction and that creates brine,” he said. “What that brine does is lower the temperature at which water freezes. So in effect, it melts the ice and keeps the surface of the road at a temperature where it doesn’t bond as more ice and snow falls on it.”
Hayward says it takes eight times less salt to prevent ice than to melt ice that has already formed, so the liquid brine could be a big money saver.
The brine was applied on a few roads in burnside on Thursday so crews could compare the results to conventional salting.
