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Sunday,
March 13, 2005
Will Cornwall offer toast to
alternative to rock salt?
CORNWALL — Leftover soluble sludge
from distilled vodka might someday be used to melt ice
and snow on the town's frigid winter roads.
The price of salt is skyrocketing, with
the average price the state paid for rock salt this
year at $43.50 a ton, some 25 percent higher than last
year, according to the Connecticut Department of Transportation.
Towns are dealing with the same price hikes prompted
mostly by transportation costs.
First Selectman Gordon Ridgway said the
town is exploring different ways of dealing with the
sloppy, slippery roads that come with harsh Northwest
Corner winters. One option being considered is a road
salt alternative: a sugary syrup that is a byproduct
of making vodka.
The sticky syrup, which can be sprayed
directly on roads or on salt piles, is touted as an
environmentally safe, effective de-icing agent that
reduces the amount of salt needed, eliminates the need
for sand, and melts snow and ice to temperatures below
minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The marketers of the goo
say it will save a town money and labor and spare road
equipment from corrosion by untreated rock salt.
"It's some sort of super slime," said First
Selectman Gordon Ridgway. "It's called Magic Salt,
which makes me really not want to try it, but we're
going to look at it."
The town has contacted Taconic Maintenance
of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., the sole distributor of Magic
Salt in New York and in the Northeast, where it deals
with 35 sub-distributors, including six in Connecticut.
Taconic Maintenance sells the bulk liquid product and
bags of treated magnesium chloride which is used with
the spray, or the company will spray a customer's pile
of rock salt with the product, company official John
Parker said. Spraying regular rock salt reduces its
corrosive quality by up to 98 percent, Parker said.
Magic Salt got its start 10 years ago
at a vodka plant in Hungary. An engineer at the plant
noticed a pond next to the plant never froze, even on
the coldest winter days, and he wondered why, Parker
said.
The engineer discovered the plant was dumping the sugary
liquidy swill left over from the vodka distilling process
into the pond. On the other side of the pond, magnesium
chloride was leaching in from a farm. The combination
of alcohol distillery mash and magnesium chloride, an
ice melter, produced a mix that lowered the pond's freezing
point to below - 45 degrees.
The engineer, Jeno Toth, figured out how
to turn the vodka sludge into a syrup. After emigrating
to the United States, he patented the product, then
sold the patent to the Sears Oil Co., which is marketing
the product under the Magic Salt label. It is produced
in Jamaica.
Magic Salt is the consistency of very
thin motor oil or very thick maple syrup and weighs
10.5 pounds per gallon.
The product costs about $2.25 to $3.25
per gallon, depending on whether the treated salt is
purchased or the company travels to a customer to spray
a salt pile. Eight gallons are needed to treat a ton
of rock salt. That's pricey, but users say the cost
of Magic Salt is offset by the savings in reduced amounts
of salt and sand needed and fewer repairs and replacement
of equipment.
Cornwall has yet to estimate costs or
potential savings should the town try the product.
"I love it," said Walter Doyle,
highway superintendent of Hyde Park, N.Y. "I've
been using it for two years and it cuts down wear and
tear on the vehicles, the amount of overtime the town
has to pay. We'll go out when it first starts to snow
and put it on the roads and then I'm able to send everybody
home and we'll come back when there's five or six inches
and we plow it and it's wet underneath. It doesn't refreeze,"
Doyle said.
Doyle said he has eliminated the use of
sand altogether and last year, the town saved about
$30,000 by not having to clean up sand in the spring.
In Cornwall, Ridgway had a question outside
the financial realm: What about the smell? "Apparently,
it really smells disgusting, so you don't want to park
your car on the side of the road when it's being sprayed,"
Ridgway said.
Company downplayed the odor. "Depends
on whose nose it is," Parker said. "It smells
like molasses or silage because it's an agricultural
by-product. It isn't horribly smelly. You wouldn't notice
it on the open road."
© 2005 Republican-American
Record Number: 71198
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