FAYETTEVILLE — The Fayetteville Transportation Division has a new solution for removing snow from city streets: beet juice, a brown, sticky liquid that is a byproduct of processed sugar beets.
The material is said to have a lower freezing point than traditional salt brine.
At A Glance
Beet Juice
According to Beet Juice Salt, a Lisle, Ill.-based distributor of a beet juice mixture for snow removal, “Beet juice is becoming a very popular snow and ice fighting tool. It is organic, reduces corrosion, melts to very low temperatures and reduces the amount of material needed for application.”
Source: Beetjuicesalt.com
Terry Gulley, Transportation Services director, said the salt-and-sand mixture workers typically spread on streets before a snowstorm works well until temperatures dip to about 15 degrees. Adding beet juice can lower the mixture’s freezing point to zero, Gulley said.
“It’s a way to melt snow and ice in real cold temperatures,” he said.
As a natural product, beet juice won’t corrode equipment and isn’t as harmful to aquatic life if it washes into waterways, Gulley said.
The city purchased 6,000 to 8,000 gallons of beet juice last year for $2 per gallon, but workers didn’t have a chance to use the material because of lack of snow.
With a chance of snow Tuesday and low temperatures expected to drop to well below freezing, this could be the week Fayetteville crews get to test the beet juice.
The material is more expensive than salt and sand, which Gulley said cost roughly $99 per ton and $15 per ton, respectively, last year.
Chris Walsh, director of operations in Beloit, Wis., said she thinks beet juice has been able to save her city money during the past 10 years. Walsh said beet juice sticks to the streets better than salt brine and doesn’t have to be applied as many times, thus, saving Beloit money on gasoline and overtime pay.
The material is effective in breaking up the first layer of snow and ice so snowplows can easily scrape it off roadways, Walsh said.
“It works phenomenal for us unless it rains first,” she said.
Walsh said beet juice, in large quantities, smells like silage — or cattle feed. It will stick to cars, she added, but, because it’s a natural product, it easily washes off.
Because the material is more expensive than salt or sand, workers in Beloit only pretreat streets using a beet juice mix when the pavement’s surface temperature is less than 17 degrees.
According to the National Weather Service, the average low temperature in Fayetteville is 26.9 degrees in December and 24.8 degrees in January.
Gulley noted, however, nearly two years ago it got much colder than that.
Fayetteville’s record low was minus 18 on Feb. 10, 2011, according to National Weather Service records, which date back to 1949.
Walsh recommended calibrating trucks and spreaders to see how much beet juice mixture local workers are using compared to traditional salt and sand.
"Without doing that, you're just singing in the wind," she said.
Gulley said his crews plan to treat streets with both beet juice and traditional mix to judge how the new solution works.
“We feel like it will be an efficient, effective product,” he said.