During winter, retail shops fill their shelves with big bags of road salt and you may see it spread on walk ways and roads to melt ice.
Road salt is halite, which is the natural mined mineral form of table salt or sodium chloride (NaCl). Rock salt has a lot of mineral impurities unlike table salt that has been purified. Road salt is usually brown or gray in color. Machines are used to mine the salt, which is broken to pieces and packed for delivery. Additives may be mixed with the mineral to avoid clumps and makes it easy for a gritting machine to drop it.
Road salt is used to reduce the freezing point of liquid through a process called freezing point depression. The salt breaks into its component ions in small quantities of liquid water. For road salt to be very effective; there should be some amount of water. The material added makes it hard for the water to turn to ice as it reduces the freezing point of the water. This is one of the reasons why road salt does not work in cold weather when turns to ice quickly. There is usually plenty liquid water present, maybe coating the salt pieces or created by friction from traffic, with that, you don’t need more water.
If cold weather is predicted, it is normal to apply brine on the roads before-hand. This helps avoid freezing and decreases the quantity of road salt that will be required to deice the road. Immediately ice begins to form, road salt is spread in gravel or pea sized chunks. It can also be mixed with dry or slightly wet sand to hasten the process.
A 10% improvement in road surface friction, leads to a 20% decrease in crashes, based on a study carried out by the American Highway Users Alliance. The study also discovered that when road surface is deiced with road salt, it decreases about 93% of accidents. This also means that, the roads are almost accidental free. Salt is a cost effective deicer.
At Rock Salt USA, we provide the top quality road salt that are economical and prevents accidents, injuries and highway fatalities, which is why a lot of states still make use of it in melting ice on slippery roads.
Contact RockSalt USA for more information about our products or to request delivery or pickup by calling us at 1(844) 725-8872 today.
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