April 27, 2015

This week’s On the Radio segment looks at at Iowa State University, where researchers are studying heated pavement as a way to remove ice and snow from roadways. Listen to the audio below, or continue reading for the transcript.

Transcript: Heated Pavement

Researchers at Iowa State University are studying heated pavement as a way to remove ice and snow from airport runways as well as streets  and sidewalks.

This is the Iowa Environmental Focus.

A team of 19 faculty, staff, and students are looking at ways that airports can use heated pavement as a more environmentally-friendly way of clearing icy and snowy runways. Using pavement heating technologies would mean a reduction de-icing salts as well as emissions caused by the mandatory task of treating salty wastewater.

The research is part of a larger national program led by Purdue University and including Iowa State University, which is home to the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center.

The Federal Aviation Administration is providing seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollars in funding for the study and Iowa State University is matching this sum.

For more information about this study, visit IowaEnvironmentalFocus.org.

From the UI Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, I’m Jerry Schnoor.

http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2015/03/02/clearrunways