BY DEBBY CAPELA

Helping prevent snowpack and ice from sticking to the roads makes roadways safer.

WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze is a new product from Cargill Deicing Technology. The anti-icing product is specifically designed for helping make safer winter roads an easier process for public works officials and commercial contractors while providing an environmentally friendly option.

Freezing rain, hard-pack and black ice are some of the many dangerous winter conditions that plague drivers and pose challenging obstacles for winter maintenance professionals. WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze is a technology developed in Europe that Cargill is bringing to the U.S. after several years of evaluations, adaptation and development.

New anti-icing technology

The WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze product is a proprietary additive that gives traditional asphalt anti-icing properties when mixed directly into the asphalt during production. By adding the anti-icing additive directly into the asphalt wearing surface, municipalities, contractors and the public can experience safer winter roads as well as benefit from fewer chlorides released into the environment when compared to traditional deicing methods.

By effectively helping to reduce the bonding of ice and snow to the pavement, WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze helps create safer driving conditions, providing tremendous benefits to the general public. What’s more, municipalities, commercial contractors and others who work to keep roads, bridges and parking areas safe for motorists and pedestrians in the wintertime will experience faster, easier plowing and safer conditions for plow drivers.

Easy, effective installation

Because WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze is mixed directly with asphalt during production, installation and application is easy. Contractors simply complete the installation process just as they would non-treated asphalt.

As an added benefit to contractors and municipalities, adding WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze to traditional asphalt potentially helps extend pavement life and reduce pothole formation. In addition, incorporating WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze to asphalt has no adverse effects on the structural components of the pavement, such as application, performance, durability or skid resistance. When integrated into the asphalt, replacing 5 percent of the aggregate weight, WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze is used in the wearing surface layer of the road only, which is recommended to be a minimum 1 1⁄4 inch thick. The anti-icing properties of WinterPave naturally migrate to the surface all season long. What’s more, there is no need for wax or seal coatings.

Preventing snowpack with eco-friendly results

WinterPave installation involves the same process as non-treated asphalt.

WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze helps prevent snowpack and ice from bonding to the pavement at surface temperatures greater than 17 degrees Fahrenheit. This prevents hazardous hard-pack from adhering to the road surface, which delays the formation of dangerous slippery conditions. This delayed formation provides a longer margin of time for snowplow drivers to intervene during heavy snowfall, allowing for faster, easier plowing and safer conditions overall.

Environmental benefits of the product result in the reduced need for sodium chloride applications to melt away hard-pack snow and ice. Once introduced to the asphalt mixture, the WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze product allows for slow and continual release of the anti-icing mixture onto the road surface for concentrated, effective results for keeping the roads clear.

A name you can trust

As a trusted resource for deicing and anti-icing solutions, Cargill Deicing Technology is proud to be the exclusive U.S. distributor of WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze. The product is an essential component in the company’s offering of deicing and anti-icing products and solutions, including bulk deicers, automated brine-making systems and anti-icing pavement overlays.

Deicing and anti-icing: Comprehensive solutions

Cargill’s WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze is another step in the organization’s dedicated path of environmental stewardship and providing superior winter maintenance solutions. Cargill Deicing Technology is committed to providing customers with deicing solutions that save lives, enhance commerce and reduce environmental impact.

Along with WinterPave asphalt anti-freeze, Cargill offers a family of deicing and anti-icing products for the winter maintenance industry, including ClearLane enhanced deicer. Nationally recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Clear-Lane enhanced deicer is a pretreated sodium chloride made from a patented liquid magnesium chloride formula and mixing process. The granular deicer has earned the EPA’s distinguished Safer Choice label, which is only granted to products deemed safer when compared to other chemicals in their class.

Cargill is recognized as industry leaders by winter maintenance professionals, and the company’s AccuBrine automated brine maker NXT-Gen and AccuBatch brine maker set the organization apart. Offering municipalities and contractors sophisticated brine-making technology with user-friendly, touch-of-a-button operations, Cargill’s brine makers provide technology for easy in-house brine making that’s affordable and accurate for producing large and small volumes of brine. Cargill’s AccuBrine blend truck loading and blending system allows winter maintenance professionals the flexibility to blend custom liquid blends either directly into their truck or storage tank. Working in conjunction with Cargill’s brine makers, or with other brine makers alone, this truck loading and blending system provides a state of the art system for blending different anti-icing or pre-wetting liquids.

Complementing WinterPave asphalt antifreeze, Cargill’s SafeLane surface overlay product is a patented, epoxy-aggregate pavement surface that is permanently installed on the road surface. The aggregate in the overlay stores, or “holds on to” deicing and anti-icing chemicals, such as brine, that have been applied prior to the storm, and releases the chemicals when needed. This process helps prevent slippery conditions such as frost, black ice and snow pack. The aggregate provides increased year-round traction for motorists, infrastructure protection and overall safer driving conditions and is ideal for bridge decks.

About the author: Debby Capela is the business development manager for Cargill Deicing Technology. She has worked for Cargill for more than 24 years.