Driving down your typical snowy covered road in the heart of the winter and seeing a snow plow drive past, casting road destroying and auto-eating salt all over the place may be a thing of the past if science is concerned. Before you get all excited to see meticulously clean and clear roads in sub-arctic temperatures during a snow storm, I’ll stress that all of the methods highlighted by the research team at the University of Houston, Texas aren’t exactly cheap meaning rollout and adoption would be slow. The methods themselves contain several different approaches with the common element being an electrical body within the roadbed that would radiate heat. More specifically, researchers have so far tested fly ash (a byproduct of coal plants) and carbon nano tubes for the channels for the electrical current to travel.
Obviously adding such structures to all the roads in the country that are touched by snowfall each year would take massive amounts of money, time, and work — much of which simply isn’t available. Another roadblock is how to create all of the energy needed to heat the roads? Simple solutions include installing some soft of solar panel or wind generator on street lighting along side the roads. Simple? Yes. Cheap? No. Then again, cutting edge technology has never been cheap. It always takes someone breaking the ice and getting the ball rolling before mass uptake can progress. Just thinking of driving down the middle of a small road in the middle of snow storm with a completely clear roadway is highly intriguing. Let’s peg a guess, what year do you think we’ll start seeing such technology roll out? 2015? 2025? 2050? Leave it in the box below.
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