How does road salt work in the winter?
How does road salt work in the winter?
An explanation of how salt is used in the winter to melt ice on roadways.
© American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Transcript
Now that winter's here, the weather fiends out there are waiting for the next big snowstorm. But before the flakes fall, armies of trucks are loaded full of one of the most important road-safety tools out there, salt. Along with keeping our French fries on point, salt, like sodium chloride, has actually saved a lot of lives, and probably even more fenders, thanks to its incredible de-icing abilities.
So here's a truck throwing salt all over some wintry road out there. And like everything else in the picture, you can bet that the salt is pretty cold. This begs the question, how could it be that something that isn't hot is melting the ice? It turns out, salt isn't actually about melting. It's all about freezing.
So the freezing point of pure water rests at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 degrees Celsius. When the temperature of water reaches a freezing point, it's normally free-flowing molecules get trapped into organized crystal structures. This is how ice is formed. Salt disrupts this process.
Upon heating water, salt breaks up into two ions, one sodium and one chloride. These two ions then move around and take up space in between water molecules, pushing them apart and frustrating their potential links to form ice. This disruption is called freezing point depression.
And so to put this simply, salt lowers the freezing point of water. But there's a limit. Salt can only act as a stable de-icer in temperatures above 16 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 9 degrees Celsius.
There's also another drawback to using salt. Consider that over 20 million tons of road salt is used annually in the US. All that salt has to go somewhere in the spring.
Of those two ions split from dissolved salt, the chloride ions can have a potentially negative effect on the environment. Chloride can kill small aquatic critters, dehydrate and kill plants, alter the composition of ground soil near roads, and can limit water circulation that keeps the lakes healthy. All that salt is also corrosive to metal, wreaking havoc on infrastructure, and, oh, yeah, your wheels, too. For these reasons, sand is used as an abrasive as an alternative. Sand is often used because it's cheap and, maybe, because folks want to avoid the whole chloride issue.
Thing is salts have a chemical advantage. Because you get two or more ions when they dissolve, you get way more melting power for the same handful de-icer. So sand might be cheap, but you have to use way more of the stuff. And that can leave quite the mess.
Now, for super cold temperatures, sodium chloride and sand won't do the job. Some alternatives that melt ice even better include magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, potassium chloride, and potassium acetate. Potassium acetate is particularly incredible at de-icing, because it works at temperatures as low as negative 75 degrees Celsius, while the rest of the bunch work around the negative 20 degree mark.
Although these alternative chemicals are better at de-icing at lower temperatures, most of them have that environment-damaging chloride, too; not to mention the fact that they cost way more than table salt. And if you're buying 20 million tons a year this stuff, well, that's a lot of money.
So here's a truck throwing salt all over some wintry road out there. And like everything else in the picture, you can bet that the salt is pretty cold. This begs the question, how could it be that something that isn't hot is melting the ice? It turns out, salt isn't actually about melting. It's all about freezing.
So the freezing point of pure water rests at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 degrees Celsius. When the temperature of water reaches a freezing point, it's normally free-flowing molecules get trapped into organized crystal structures. This is how ice is formed. Salt disrupts this process.
Upon heating water, salt breaks up into two ions, one sodium and one chloride. These two ions then move around and take up space in between water molecules, pushing them apart and frustrating their potential links to form ice. This disruption is called freezing point depression.
And so to put this simply, salt lowers the freezing point of water. But there's a limit. Salt can only act as a stable de-icer in temperatures above 16 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 9 degrees Celsius.
There's also another drawback to using salt. Consider that over 20 million tons of road salt is used annually in the US. All that salt has to go somewhere in the spring.
Of those two ions split from dissolved salt, the chloride ions can have a potentially negative effect on the environment. Chloride can kill small aquatic critters, dehydrate and kill plants, alter the composition of ground soil near roads, and can limit water circulation that keeps the lakes healthy. All that salt is also corrosive to metal, wreaking havoc on infrastructure, and, oh, yeah, your wheels, too. For these reasons, sand is used as an abrasive as an alternative. Sand is often used because it's cheap and, maybe, because folks want to avoid the whole chloride issue.
Thing is salts have a chemical advantage. Because you get two or more ions when they dissolve, you get way more melting power for the same handful de-icer. So sand might be cheap, but you have to use way more of the stuff. And that can leave quite the mess.
Now, for super cold temperatures, sodium chloride and sand won't do the job. Some alternatives that melt ice even better include magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, potassium chloride, and potassium acetate. Potassium acetate is particularly incredible at de-icing, because it works at temperatures as low as negative 75 degrees Celsius, while the rest of the bunch work around the negative 20 degree mark.
Although these alternative chemicals are better at de-icing at lower temperatures, most of them have that environment-damaging chloride, too; not to mention the fact that they cost way more than table salt. And if you're buying 20 million tons a year this stuff, well, that's a lot of money.