Salt, Brine, Seawater

SDOT Snow Day Nov 23: A Loader Pours Salt into the Back of an SDOT Truck

Given the amount of snow that has happened (both here in the UK and in the US) I’ve been thinking….why not put sea water on the roads to deice them?  I mean, we put salt on the roads to melt snow/ice.  Some places also “pre wet” the salt and make a brine.  Isn’t that what seawater is?

Now, granted, this wouldn’t work if you had to truck it great distances…but for a city on the coast, I imagine it would cost virtually nothing to pump a tanker fill of seawater and spray it on the roads.

I don’t think anyone does it do there must be a reason…..

Image from SDOT Photos via flickr 

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