Wednesday, May 16th. Kalamazoo County Road Commission, J.L Milling Company and Great Lakes Chloride, Inc. will partner to demonstrate the benefits of Calcium Chloride in the base stabilization process.
We are holding a “Lunch & Learn” to see the process of injecting Calcium @ the drum of the mill. Your invited, come out and see the process as it happens.
Details are on the invitation below. Hope to see you there.
Hello again. Just back and catching up from the APWA Snow Show in Milwaukee. What a great event. Lot’s of vendor displays, lot’s of new folks to talk with and share idea’s and talk about what works and what doesn’t. On that note, I just have to share a presentation done by Joe Althouse, Chemical Engineer for Occidental Chemical Corporation. I have known Joe for some time now and I have to say, he know’s of what he speaks. If he hasn’t proven the science, he will tell you it isn’t true and give you the details of why or why not something does or doesn’t work. His presentation gives you the “tools” to decide for yourself if deicer claims are fact or fiction Baloney. The one thing I gleaned from the presentation is that if your presented with claims that can’t be backed up with a study, be very careful about the validity of the claim.
Enough from me, take a look at the presentation and let me know what you think. It was very well received at the show.
It seems funny to be talking about winter at this time of year. But, for most road agencies, winter maintenance is the single most expensive activity in their budget. In an effort to reduce these cost Great Lakes Chloride will be partnering with Michigan DOT and Kalamazoo County Road Commission to perform winter de-icing using liquids, Calcium Chloride w/BOOST*.
The biggest issue with DLA is that it’s new to snow plow operators and the public. Like anything new, you will need to train crews to use the liquids properly. As with any tool there are times to take it out of the toolbox and times to put it back in.
Training, communication and documentation of your success and failures is important. If someone on your team see’s something going well or that is a problem. Talk about it then, don’t wait until spring or the next season to bring it up, it can’t be corrected then.
ClearRoads has an excellent power point presentation on DLA. Take a look.
http://www.clearroads.org/research-projects/downloads/0902-DLA-Slide-Presentation.pdf
This process has been used successfully across the country for over ten years now. The main reasons behind the move to liquids are, bare pavement quicker, faster clean up, increased level of service. To date across the country, DLA has been a salt brine operation. This partnership is two fold, prove the validity of DLA and show that using CaCl2 w/BOOST*, can provide lower operating temperatures, lower application rates, fewer return trips to the shop to refill, quicker clean up, increased service levels and reduced operating cost.
I will keep you posted as to our success.
Gravel Road this spring with no Dust Control Treatment in 2011. Note the rutting and potholes.
This is the same gravel road, difference is this section was treated with 38% Calcium Chloride the previous season for dust control. As noted in a previous post, Calcium Chloride not only helps with dust control, it adds with compaction and prevents frost heaves and spring break up. This saves time and money for road agencies in added gravel, trucking and grading.
I will be doing additional research on the problems associated with Sodium Chloride (salt) and the damage it causes during the spring thaw and break up of gravel roads. This is becoming a real problem for agencies using mineral well brine and oil field brine with large amounts of salt being added to these roads during each application.
Salt in dust control brine can cause problems. It loosens rather then compacts soils as Calcium Chloride does. Below is an article talking about the problems associated with brine and why they have chosen to replace mineral brine (salt as they call it) with Calcium Chloride.
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Dave Budd