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City Snow Removal

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Author: s_noonan

Group: Technical

Filesize: 2.49 MB

Date added: 2014-02-16

Rating: 5

Downloads: 3077

Views: 352

Comments: 3

Ratings: 1

Times favored: 0

Made with: Algodoo v2.1.0

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A while ago, somewhere, I read that some city either melts their snow or was considering melting their snow and pumping the water down the storm drains. I thought that was crazy because the energy to melt snow is the same amount of energy as it would take to lift the snow 21.2 miles (34.1 km) straight up. So my thought was that the snow could be warmed to the point a little below freezing (maybe by adding some tap water or with a heat pump) and then compressed under great pressure in order to cause it to partially thaw (into slush) and then immediately freeze into a solid when the pressure is removed. If the snow is slush to begin with, then the excess water can be removed by compression, the remaining slush would harden upon removal of pressure. If the ice ball needed to be cooled more for safety sake, then the cooling coils of a heat pump could be used (using the same heat pump that was used to preheat the snow). The manufactured snowball then could be mechanically thrown or maybe shot using compressed air. The flight paths of the ice balls from multiple throwers could be coordinated by a network of computers. Now throwing large ice balls might sound crazy, but its probably no more crazy than putting people on a jet and flying them to different locations around the world. At any rate, the energy to throw the snow should be a fraction of what it takes to melt the snow.
Last edited at 2016/07/02 20:38:52 by s_noonan
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Interesting concept. But I have one question: What is a snow-plow from Venango Regional Airport (Pennsylvania) doing plowing snow in New York? Did the driver get lost? :lol:
Just a thought about snow removal. I've had an idea for many years for dealing with snow accumulation, but everyone I've told my idea to, thought that I was nuts. Well, I just might be nuts, but that's beside the point. My idea is to set up a large array of high power microwave generators all around a city. The microwaves would be transmitted straight up toward the clouds during a snow storm. Each microwave dish would have a hole at its central point, and a large hose or pipe would run from the hole in the dish to a central pumping station where the water would be pumped to holding tanks or a reservoir. The microwave generators would melt the snowflakes as they fell, turning them into rain which would be collected to be used later for drinking water.

Brilliant, huh? :tup:
Microwaving snowflakes is doable. Getting all of them and collecting the water is a little harder. Energy usage would be high.

Regarding the airport truck. The city bought it used and failed to take off the identification. What's a little bit harder to explain is how the snowballs are landing in a lake in the UK. The local residents are up in arms because the lake is getting seriously polluted.