Winter Insanity: Beet Juice to the Rescue!

Some clever folks have decided to start using beet juice, of all things, as an anti-icing agent in order to keep roads clear of snow and ice.  It works at lower temperatures and is less corrosive to metal and concrete.  St. Louis and Cincinnati are two cities who have been using this new ingredient this winter.

From St. Louis:

The Missouri Department of Transportation is using an anti-icing product made from sugar beets to help keep the roads clear.

Mo-DOT used 78,000 gallons of Geomelt to keep roads clear statewide last year. It first started using the Geomelt in northwest Missouri in 2006.

Beet juice is a natural product that works well when mixed with either rock salt or liquid salt brine to keep ice from forming on the roads before a storm. It also helps melt snow and ice once they are already on the roads.

Combined with salt, the beet juice freezes at a lower temperature than just salt alone, so it can be used when the weather is colder - even at temperatures closer to zero. The mixture reduces the corrosive properties of salt and improves its effectiveness. That means less salt, more efficiency and less equipment, bridge deck and vehicle corrosion.

The sugar beet juice is brown in color so salt mixed with it is somewhat brown. The liquid is a by-product of sugar production. 

USAToday reports on Cincinnati's rave reviews:

It works by lowering the freezing temperature of the brine that's used to pretreat roads, experts say. And it's made from a waste product that was dumped down the drain before this new use was discovered.

Road crews learned long ago that pretreating highways with brine before a storm helps prevent the accumulation of snow and ice. Then they learned that adding beet juice to the brine could make the treatment effective at lower temperatures.

A commercial product called Geomelt uses the beet juice that's left after sugar has been extracted from sugar beets. The Ohio Department of Transportation is testing it in 11 counties, spokesman Scott Varner said Wednesday.

"Rock salt alone stops melting snow at about 18 degrees; Geomelt goes to 20 below," Varner said.

Geomelt is produced by Geomelt USA, which encourages a transition from using large amounts of harmful chemicals and salt to using more ecologically responsible products with a minimal impact on the environment.