Salt or Calcium Chloride 3

[MiketheEngineer]

Structural here needs some help

We have many catwalks, scaffolding, walk ways made from painted steel and/or galvanized steel.

The question has come up - Is it better to de-ice these with salt (don't think so) or calcium chloride?

Or is there a better chemical we should be using??

Hair dryers are not accpetable!!

Thanks

 

[zdas04]

The road guys in Southern Colorado have been using Mag Chloride for the last few years. I'm not sure why they changed or what the benefits are, but I've heard discussions that the Mag Chloride might be less corrosive than NaCl (non-technical, might be apocryphal). I don't know what the corrosion potential for CaCl is relative to NaCl either.

David

 

[rmw]

As bad as NaCl is, there is copious amounts of information within the technical pubs of the trucking industry about the evils of mag chloride. It is doing a number on truck/trailer frames in ways never seen by salt.

rmw

 

[bimr]

You might consider the use of plain old sand since sand will not corrode your steel. Many years ago, the highway departments all used sand, but they have since gone to the salt products.

http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr235/017-030.pdf

The most common salt is calcium chloride because it is has the least problems with freezing. You can also apply it as a liquid. Magnesium chloride is generally applied as liquid.

You will have corrosion problems with all of the salt chemicals. The following link has some information for structural designers:

http://tac-atc.ca/english/pdf/roadandbridge.PDF

 

[mxmaciek]

In addition to the bimr's info:
1. Use of sand is limited, and without proper sieving - you will ensure that some of the road users will be blessing you for the sand blasting and bigger stones hit effects.
2. Application of the chloride-based salts is effcient, and each can be used in liquid form, to avoid above problem.
3. Application of all of the chloride-based salts is related with the corrosion.
4. Before use, check the efficiency (i.e. in Europe there is common policy, that below 10-15C salts are not effective anymore and only one choice is a sand).