This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher Intalyata.

Got a minute?

Every winter some 20 million tons of salt are dumped on America's roads.

And that sodium chloride melts ice or prevents

its formation helping to prevent accidents. But road salt has its downsides.

This is actually not very economical because the salt is mainly corrosive.

Seda Kizalel, a chemical engineer at Coach University in Istanbul, Turkey.

She says salt's corrosive effects don't discriminate.

They affect cars, vehicles, and also of

cars, vehicles and also for nature, plants, microorganisms.

So Kizalal and her colleagues designed a road substance that can de-ice itself.

They started with a polymer called SBS, commonly added to

strength and asphalt. They whipped up an emulsion of SBS with potassium

formate, an alternative salt that's been studied as a more environmentally

friendly de-isor than regular road salt. And then they added that emulsion to bitumen,

the sticky black stuff and asphalt. They subjected their creation and

regular bitumen to the winter weather conditions that typically lead to black ice.

And it turns out the hybrid compound delayed ice formation 10 minutes longer than the control.

And the samples continued releasing salt for

more than two months. The study is in the journal Industrial and Engineering

Chemistry research. Of course 10 minutes of de-icing is a nice head start, but it's not going to put salt truck drivers out of business.

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