Out of salt / grit for our roads? Here's a solution

unkel

Article:

Netherlands could run out of road salt

Extract:

In town of Etten-Leur in the province of North Brabant, the local council has found a novel way of solving its salt shortage problem. It has taken to speading 18 tons of bath salts on the roads. The coloured bath salts smell of lavender, green tea and mango.

BostonB

They'd be a stink if they did that here...

peasant

Spetter pieter pater
Hij komt een druppel later

Dartz

Alcohol will do it too. It's why beer doesn't freeze.

Give new meaning to the term Drink-Driving though :P

mayoireland

you would have every alco licking the street and that would help solve the problem aswell

easyeason3

After pointless christmas presents I'm sure we could all donate a few tonnes of bath salts we will never use.
Amazing how a christmas can't pass without getting a present containing bath salts, at least now we have a solution for it!

masseyno9

Beer does freeze - its only 4%-ish alcohol. Spirits generally don't due to their higher alcohol volume.

If I was being extra pedantic I could point out that alcohol (ethanol) freezes at -114C

peasant

easyeason3 wrote: »

After pointless christmas presents I'm sure we could all donate a few tonnes of bath salts we will never use.
Amazing how a christmas can't pass without getting a present containing bath salts, at least now we have a solution for it!

You're a girl, right?

old_aussie

BostonB wrote: »

They'd be a stink if they did that here...

Only if they fell in it

Yakult

I think we need need to put boiling water on the road to melt it away

bazz26

Those crazy Dutch.

JHMEG

peasant wrote: »

Spetter pieter pater
Hij komt een druppel later

Cad tá rá agat? Aistriúchán ceart led thuil? Aon teanga.

Danke.

JHMEG

The old way of gritting in this country used be ashes from the fire, which I've yet to see.

Darragh29

unkel wrote: »

Article:

Netherlands could run out of road salt

Extract:

In town of Etten-Leur in the province of North Brabant, the local council has found a novel way of solving its salt shortage problem. It has taken to speading 18 tons of bath salts on the roads. The coloured bath salts smell of lavender, green tea and mango.

Lmao, I'm going down to Davy Stockbrokers in the morning to buy a load of Radox Shares!!! :D:D

BostonB

JHMEG wrote: »

The old way of gritting in this country used be ashes from the fire, which I've yet to see.

I've seen that. But ash mixed with snow, is very messy.

PCPhoto

ffs .... there was a guy on the news earlier that said .... we have plenty of grit here all the government have to do it buy it.

robtri

PCPhoto wrote: »

ffs .... there was a guy on the news earlier that said .... we have plenty of grit here all the government have to do it buy it.

Yeah I seen that on the news last night.... it was a right joke...
All these ministers and councils saying in interviews, grit levels are extremly low.. we have to import and that will take around 10 days...

Then cue an interview with this guy here in ireland standing beside mountains and mountains of grit... saying we have enough here to supply everybody.. all they need to do is come and buy it....

it was very funny in a way:D

boxclever

robtri wrote: »

Yeah I seen that on the news last night.... it was a right joke...
All these ministers and councils saying in interviews, grit levels are extremly low.. we have to import and that will take around 10 days...

Then cue an interview with this guy here in ireland standing beside mountains and mountains of grit... saying we have enough here to supply everybody.. all they need to do is come and buy it....

it was very funny in a way:D

The councils get a hard time over everything. Grit is not the problem its salt that is in short supply. Whoever was on the news is trying to put pressure on the government so he can make a couple of quid.

Grit is of limited benifit and is no solution, it is only better than doing nothing at all and if the councils did buy tonnes of grit they would get grief for wasting money on something which doesnt work! (i dont work for the council!!)

Whippersnapper

boxclever wrote: »

The councils get a hard time over everything. Grit is not the problem its salt that is in short supply. Whoever was on the news is trying to put pressure on the government so he can make a couple of quid.

Grit is of limited benifit and is no solution, it is only better than doing nothing at all and if the councils did buy tonnes of grit they would get grief for wasting money on something which doesnt work! (i dont work for the council!!)

Isn't grit salt and sand though?

robtri

boxclever wrote: »

The councils get a hard time over everything. Grit is not the problem its salt that is in short supply. Whoever was on the news is trying to put pressure on the government so he can make a couple of quid.

Grit is of limited benifit and is no solution, it is only better than doing nothing at all and if the councils did buy tonnes of grit they would get grief for wasting money on something which doesnt work! (i dont work for the council!!)

well... i dont know too much about grit..... but your man said it was all in order for use.. and that a few county councils where already buying it off him.......

helimachoptor

QUOTE=masseyno9;63862644]Beer does freeze - its only 4%-ish alcohol. Spirits generally don't due to their higher alcohol volume.

If I was being extra pedantic I could point out that alcohol (ethanol) freezes at -114C
[/QUOTE]

Is it not -78C?

Alun

Whippersnapper wrote: »

Isn't grit salt and sand though?

NO.

The stuff they put on roads, as has been pointed out many times both here and in other forums, is crushed rock salt. When the stuff is first mined it contains both rock(very crumbly, brittle stuff) and salt, and is processed to crush it and produce road grit. There is a mine in Carrickfergus in NI, and two in Britain (one in Cheshire, don't know where the other one is).

At the moment all 3 are working flat out 24/7 to produce as much as they can, and are at 100% capacity, but the vast majority of it is going to customers in the UK where they've had much worse weather than we have. On the BBC just now, they were saying that the Roads Agency, or whatever they're called , had 13 days supply for major roads,a nd for the local councils it was up to them, but even then they're running out.

The 'piles of grit' they were standing by looked like piles of the stuff they spread on the roads with tar to 'resurface' them here. I doubt if that will have much effect on the hard compacted ice and snow we have now.

goose2002

Good info Alun, and a good look at the reality of the situation. Somebody should phone into Gerry Ryan with this as he seems to think the county councils can pull rock salt out of their a**! It seems to be lost on him that a normal years supply has been used in 3 weeks and that the rest Europe is pretty much in the same situation.

GreeBo

Alun wrote: »

When the stuff is first mined it contains both rock(very crumbly, brittle stuff) and salt, and is processed to crush it and produce road grit.

RockSalt is not a mixture of salt and rock!
Rocksalt is rocksalt. Sodium Chloride in mineral form aka Halite.

They dont process is to get a mixture of rocks and salt, they add sand or grit to the crushed rock salt. The "salt" mixes with the snow/ice to form brine which has a lower freezing temperature then that of water and thus melts the ice/snow. The sand/grit gives traction on the melting ice/snow.

BostonB

Even sand would be better than nothing, it won't clear the ice but it would give traction on it. I don't see how they used it all so fast because in my area they only grit about 10% (maybe less) of the roads they usually do. Maybe in other areas theres more evidence of them actually using it. In some places they only gritted one side of the road.

Whats curious is the story has changed since yesterday, originally it was they couldn't grit because of the traffic and they were caught out by the snow, and there was no point gritting before it snowed. Now they'e saying they've used it all up!

kmick

They could use beach sand which contains salt. However it apparently adds to coastal erosion and would probably be difficult to collect in large amounts.

Alun

GreeBo wrote: »

RockSalt is not a mixture of salt and rock!
Rocksalt is rocksalt. Sodium Chloride in mineral form aka Halite.

They dont process is to get a mixture of rocks and salt, they add sand or grit to the crushed rock salt. The "salt" mixes with the snow/ice to form brine which has a lower freezing temperature then that of water and thus melts the ice/snow. The sand/grit gives traction on the melting ice/snow.

I'm quite aware that salt is Sodium chloride, and how it works, thanks :rolleyes:

All I can go on is a report I saw on the telly during the last freeze about one of the mines they use for this stuff, can't remember which one. From what I remember, the deposits there weren't just pure salt, the salt was mixed up with a very crumbly orangey brown rock, and what they got out is a mixture of both which is then crushed. Quite possibly they add some extra grit to create the required mix, I don't know, but the stuff they got out of the ground wasn't pure NaCl by any means, and was quite brown in colour. There may well be rock salt deposits that are purer, and require the addition of larger amounts of grit, I don't know.

Anyway, regardless of all this pedantry, they can't, as someone said, just pull this stuff out of their arses, nor will any old pile of random crushed rock someone has lying about in their quarry perform the same function.

peasant

Alun wrote: »

nor will any old pile of random crushed rock someone has lying about in their quarry perform the same function.

Funnily enough, it would ....if only we had more snow.

There are regions in southern Germany and Austria that get a lot of snow regularly and where, mostly for environmental reasons, they have stopped salting the roads altogether.

Instead they let the snow compact and pepper it every now and then with a fresh load of very small grit. (I think it's basically crusher dust, quite unuseable otherwise) and that serves really well at getting a good, grippy surface. Occasionally the worst ruts get planed off with the snow plough to even out the road.

But that only works when you get enough snow.

Marlow

peasant wrote: »

There are regions in southern Germany and Austria that get a lot of snow regularly and where, mostly for environmental reasons, they have stopped salting the roads altogether.

Germany hasn't salted for years .. even in my childhood. The big difference was always, that we in Denmark were salting the roads and Germany was using sand, ie. less rusty cars south of the border.

And yes, that is because of environmental reasons.

/M

RobAMerc

there seems to be a fair bit of knowledge here maybe enough to answer my question,

Would a spraying of sea water be of any use ? I realise the sea does freeze so its a fairly low sodium solution but I presume it only freezes at a much lower temp ?

ridicule at will !

peasant

RobAMerc wrote: »

there seems to be a fair bit of knowledge here maybe enough to answer my question,

Would a spraying of sea water be of any use ? I realise the sea does freeze so its a fairly low sodium solution but I presume it only freezes at a much lower temp ?

ridicule at will !

Salt water freezes at around -4 degrees, so from that point of view it would be quite useless.

The briny solution of rock salt and thawed ice also freezes over again at some point (depending on the salt content) but at least the rock salt "burns" holes in the ice before it freezes again whereas salt water would just smooth things over and turn everything into glass.

woodseb

why don't they just send out the road sweeping trucks just after it snows to keep the roads clear before it freezes over?

GreeBo

Rocks salt also becomes pretty useless once you get under -8 or so.
There are other chlorides you can use at lower temperatures (that are also less damaging to the environment and the road surface)
Manganese Chloride is probably the best.

GreeBo

woodseb wrote: »

why don't they just send out the road sweeping trucks just after it snows to keep the roads clear before it freezes over?

Once anyone has driven on it it becomes impossible to just sweep away, still the idea has some merit as the earlier you remove it the better.

Has anyone actually seen any gritters using their snow plough or are they all just gritting?