Washing trucks used to deliver standard rock salt during winter operations is a necessary operation since this salt is highly corrosive and would otherwise have a highly detrimental impact on the expected lifetime of these expensive vehicles.

While local disposal of these wash waters has long been practiced as a cheap, fast approach to get rid of this waste water, the high salt content of this water (with 1000's of milligrams per liter, and perhaps even percentile levels) can cause environmental stress to plants and organisms living in these receiving ditches, creeks, rivers, lakes, etc. As a result, more acceptable procedures must be found and implemented.

This site presents one such strategy developed by the Indiana Department of Transportation, where the salt-laden wash water is collected and reused in the manufacture of inexpensive 'rock salt' brine solutions suitable for both deicing and anti-icing.

Brine application both for deicing and anti-icing has recently proven to be a widely used, cost effective wintertime DOT practice.

Several brine forms may be used for these activities, including not only an inexpensive 'rock salt' form but also more expensive, commmercially purchased calcium and magnesium brine forms which offer a lower freezing point.

The focus of this site is that of reusing the wash water generated during 'rock salt' truck washing.

Before the wash water generated during truck washing can be reused, though, the salt content of this water must first be raised to a level considerably higher, at which the freezing point of the solution reaches its lowest possible point. In turn, this brine is then loaded on truck-mounted sprayers fitted with rear spray bars.

INDOT”s innovative strategy for ‘salt truck wash water reuse’ accordingly promotes this practice with an additional value-added benefit.

 Beneficially putting ‘salt truck wash water’ back on our highways makes a lot more sense than ‘wasting’ this resource.