The students at the University of Houston, Texas, are working towards a solution to melt the snow on the roads, automatically. Similar to a huge, heavy electric blanket, the students are trying to build “self-heating” roads, which will hopefully eliminate the need for salting trucks or ploughs during heavy snowstorms in the US.
This can be done by inserting electric heating elements into roads or inside the structure of bridges, which will then warm the roads to a degree that will not allow the snow to reside, similar to the subways in New York that help the snow to melt.
The students working on the project, have tried many things with sheets of carbon nanofibres, providing the fastest way to clear snow from the roads.
According to their test, the concrete block they tested it on, measuring 25 square cm, warmed the roads from 0 °C to 10 °C, using 6 watts of power, in just two hours.
However, they still have to find some way to reduce the power load, or shift to some other power resource because extensive use of this could cause a lot of load to the University of Houston, as with wide-spread use the power consumption would be vast.
Maybe the students should now focus on other power resources, including renewable resources to power the electric heating elements. This way, although the initial cost may be high, there will be no power cost once the installations start working.
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