Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpxQPPIKdy4

It takes about 80 cal to melt 1 gram of ice to form 1 gram of water. The same amount of energy will raise the water by 80C. I suspect that the environmental concerns for dumping snow in the local water shed are about the same as dumping melted snow in the same place ( possibly via storm sewer).

I got the following numbers from wikipedia

333 Kj/kg to melt ice
44  Mj/kg of gas

Doing the conversions

44 x 10^6 / 333 x 10^3  ~ 133 kg of snow per kg of gas.

If you assume a capacity of 10,000 kg of snow per dump truck and 5Km per kg of fuel then:

10,000 / 133 * 5 ~ 375 Km

So if you are trucking the snow to some place further than about 138 km ( truck has to get back to the loader) it makes more sense to melt it. If you are going somewhere closer trucking is better.

I am guessing at the dump truck capacities and fuel efficiencies, does anyone have better numbers.

I am also assuming you don't need to heat the newly made water above 0C before you dump it and let it run away on its own.

How many pounds of turkey fat does it take to melt 1 ton of snow?  :)  Almost forgot about the calorimetric calculation.

If you factor in hourly wages, plus union dues, plus liability insurance, and what not, the distance at which to haul away snow decreases quite a bit.

Nibbler

I haven't done the math on fuel, but I can say this.  The town I am in has to truck snow about 20km. The still have a dragon snow melter and are in the process of possibly ordering another one based on savings from the test on the first machine.  So your 135km doesn't reflect actual cost based on many other things other then fuel.  You have to remember that truck involves men to operate, which based on municiple wages is not cheap, often when snow needs to be trucked away its wage overtime since they have already spend days pushing it off the roads to begin with.  Then there is maintinence cost.  There is also dispatching and logistics, etc...   The snow melter's can be ran by one man, the loader operator.  Granted it has to be moved from place to place, so a truck driver has to come into play at times.

Environmentally it is safer as drainage is treated in my area.  But of course that comes at a price too.. it cost to be green :\

Just to put things in perspective how much our lives revolve around snow in my area.   The city has gps tracking on all loaders, graders and salters.  You can track in real time were everything is on the municipal website.