Applicability of Highway Snow-Melting Agents

Abstract

The snow-and-ice-covered pavements threaten highway transport safety and smoothness. The use of snow-melting agents is a significant means to ice and snow removal, anti-ice and to anti-skid on the highway in time. With applicagtion practice requirements and the advance of the cognitive level of snow-melting agent technology, the highway snow-melting agent technology experiences three stages, which are chloride salt, non-chloride salt and environment-friendly stages. As the chloride salts have been used in large quantities for a long time, their corrosion and damage to the environment and infrastructures are serious and significant because of the existence of the chlorides. So the snow-melting agents such as non-chlorides and environment-friendly agents appear in the market and come into use. It is expected that the use of non-chlorides and environment-friendly snow-melting agents on the ice-and-snow covered pavements can reduce or eliminate the adverse effects on the environment and infrastructures while they have the same melting snow performance as the chloride salts. Is it right or possible for us to use non-chlorides and environment-friendly snow-melting agents instead of chloride salts? And can the non-chlorides and environment-friendly snow-melting agents function as the alternatives of chloride salts to remove the highway surface ice and snow with fewer effects on the environment and infrastructures? A lot of tests are done about the melting snow and ice performance, the corrosion to the concrete, the effects of poa pratensis seed germination percentage of different snow-melting agents. The tests results show the differences among the different snow-melting agents on the aspects of technology, environment and economy. The applicability of the different snow-melting agents is summarized. Then technological references are put forward to use snow-melting agents efficiently, safely and environmentally-friendly.