Effect of Granularity of Salt and Pretreatment on Deicing Performance

Large amount of salts are used in cold regions every winter to keep users of roads, parking lots and sidewalks safe. While effective for snow and ice control, salts at high concentrations are detrimental to the environment and corrosive to vehicles and infrastructure. Therefore, reducing the salt usage, with new technologies such as pretreating, and substituting the conventional chloride salts with alternative materials (organic based) are sought. This paper presents the field test results on the deicing performance of coarse and fine salt pretreated with alternative agents of Snowmelt, Fusion and Safepaw. The performance of pretreated salts was field evaluated under a wide variety of weather conditions. Additionally, the performance of the coarse salt and fine salt was also compared to investigate the effect of particle size on deicing performance. The analysis indicated that pre-treating salt with alternative liquids did not increase the deicing effectiveness significantly under the experienced winter conditions. Also, it was observed that fine salt (with smaller particles) was more effective in increasing pavement clearing speed than coarse salt (with larger particles).

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHD65 Standing Committee on Winter Maintenance.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Hosseini, Faranak
  • Hossain, S M Kamal
  • Fu, Liping
  • Li, Shen Dian
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 18p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Deicing; Deicing chemicals; Field tests; Frigid regions; Grain size (Geology); Surface treating; Weather conditions; Winter maintenance
• Subject Areas: Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; Materials;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01595690
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-3948
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Apr 4 2016 10:16AM