by josh perry, editor
[email protected]

a new study conducted by researchers at virginia tech university (blacksburg, va.) has demonstrated that sunlight-absorbing, thermal blankets can melt snow three times faster than it would on its own, which has the potential to cut snow-removal costs for the parts of the world that are regularly covered with snow during the winter.

snow piles like the one pictured above may be a thing of the past thanks to research at virginia tech. (wikimedia commons)

according to a report from the american chemical society (acs), snow reflects most of the sunlight that hits it, which means that it absorbs only a small portion of the heat that the sunlight provides. this leads to the giant piles of snow that dot the landscape every winter after a big snowstorm in the midwest or the northeast.

“most cities in snow-prone regions either haul it to disposal sites or use gas-powered heaters to melt it. both of these approaches are labor-intensive, time-consuming and costly,” the report continued.

to avoid using contaminates such as soot or antifreeze, which can speed up the melting process, researchers used a thin, conductive, and thermally-absorbent metal blanket made from an aluminum alloy.

“two were coated with black enamel or black silicon-based spray paint that readily absorbed sunlight,” the article explained. “the third blanket was bare aluminum, which reflected sunlight about as well as snow. in laboratory experiments, each of the blankets was draped over a pile of man-made snow stored in a refrigerated container.”

the blanketed piles and an uncovered pile were exposed to a high-intensity lamp. snow melted at the same rate when it was uncovered as when it had the bare aluminum covering it but the snow under the painted blankets melted three times faster (measured by water run-off).

“the researchers conclude that these absorptive blankets could be used to quickly melt snowbanks in parking lots, driveways or roadsides without using heaters, soot or chemicals,” the article concluded.

the research was recently published in langmuir. the abstract stated:

“fallen snow is one of the most reflective surfaces found in nature. as a result, snowbanks can take many weeks to melt even when the air temperature is above freezing. here, we introduce a simple and passive method for quickly melting snowbanks by draping a thermally absorptive blanket over the snow.

“using controlled experimental conditions, it was observed that snowbanks can melt 300% faster when a thermally absorptive blanket is placed on top.

“the mechanism is the threefold increase in absorptivity of the spray-coated blanket compared to bare snow, which allows the vast majority of the irradiation to be used to overcome the latent heat of fusion.”