The service has tested the mixture for three winters and results show that salt, mixed with sugar not only reduces car corrosion by 50%, but also decreases the amount of heavy metals, released into the environment. It also proved to be more persistent than regular deicing agents, with road surfaces becoming drier quicker.
"Now we don't have to go out [for road maintenance] that much," project supervisor Goran Gabrielsson said.
However, the project still has some drawbacks. One of them is that the road authority uses culinary sugar instead of refined sugar beet byproducts, making the innovative mixture six times more expensive than ordinary deicing chemicals.
Now the road service plans to add pine extract to the mixture to keep away elks, which are fond of eating salt and sugar from roads.
