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As seawater freezes in the polar ocean, salt brine concentrates are expelled from the sea ice, creating a downward flow of dense, extremely cold, saline water, with a lower freezing point than the surrounding water. When this plume comes into contact with the neighboring ocean water, its extremely low temperature causes ice to instantly form ...
“The more salt, the more the freezing point is lowered,” Julienne Stroeve, senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, tells Popular Mechanics.
The brine flowing through the brine channels and out of the bottom of the ice is very cold and salty, so it sinks in the warmer, fresher seawater under the ice, forming a plume. The plume is colder than the freezing point of sea water under the ice, so the seawater can freeze where it touches the plume.
Salt for use of melting ice and snow works through a phenomenon called freezing-point depression, the lowering of a substances freezing point after the addition of solutes. When road salt is added to roads, aside from providing better friction for vehicles on the road, it also dissolves in the water of the ice, resulting in a lower freezing point.
The phenomenon of freezing-point depression has many practical uses. The radiator fluid in an automobile is a mixture of water and ethylene glycol. The freezing-point depression prevents radiators from freezing in winter. Road salting takes advantage of this effect to lower the freezing point of the ice it is placed on.
Snow and ice have brought disruption across the country as Britons get their first taste of winter – with more forecast for the weekend, Any driver will be familiar with the grit that sees off ...
Turns out, rubbing alcohol has a much lower freezing point than water (128°F below 0), so it speeds up the melting process and prevents the surface from icing up in the future, Rossen says.
The surface is treated primarily by snow removal. Roads are also treated by spreading various materials on the surface. These materials generally fall into two categories: chemical and inert. Chemical (including salt) distribution induces freezing-point depression, causing ice and snow to melt at a lower temperature. Chemical treatment can be ...