Beet Juice and Molasses Deicer
Road crews in Akron, Ohio are using beet juice to remove ice and snow from the Ohio city's roadways this winter.
Akron Public Works Bureau Manager Paul Barnett said once the sugar is removed from the beets, the juice is mixed with calcium chloride and rock salt to create a very efficient deicer product, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported Wednesday."The beets also allow the salt and the calcium chloride to stick to the road better and last longer, allowing us to save money with fewer application over the course of winter," Barnett said. upi.com
The process, using a low cost agricultural byproduct, reduces the amount of salt used on roadways and reduces the amount of salt getting into streams and ground water.
And from theUS Patent office,
A composition is proposed for use in preventing the formation of ice or snow on outdoor surfaces, such as roadways or aggregate stockpiles, and also for deicing surfaces upon which snow or ice has formed. The composition is formed from a waste product of the process of removing sugar from molasses, also known as desugared molasses. As a byproduct of a widely used process for making edible sugar, the desugared molasses is readily available at a low cost....
Moreover, the composition is ready for use in conventional spraying equipment without the need for mixing agents, is environmentally friendly, and is able to perform at temperatures well below the freezing point of water. The composition is also non-corrosive and can be admixed with chloride salts, such as magnesium, calcium, or sodium chloride, to reduce the corrosiveness of the resulting solution while still providing effective deicing activity.
