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Milwaukee Will Fight Slippery Roads


rashore

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Milwaukee might not salt its icy roads this winter. Instead, the city plans to cover its potentially hazardous motorways with cheese brine, the salt-and-water solution used in the production of cheese. The brine, considered a wasteful byproduct, is apparently cheaper and much more abundant than rock salt. (Well, at least it is in Wisconsin, the country’s leader in cheese production.)

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-16/milwaukee-will-fight-slippery-roads-with-cheese-brine

Thought this was interesting and decided to share :)

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Well, brine don't smell or taste like much- it's pretty much saltwater with a little whey in it to make the pH right. It won't really smell like anything come spring because it will wash away with the melting snow and spring rains.

I bet it probably isn't quite so harsh on cars like road salt is.

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Interesting idea. When waste products can be put to good use it's satisfying :)

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I've read that you can do something similar with the leftovers from beer production.

The problem is getting enough of the stuff and salt is cheap.

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Well, brine don't smell or taste like much- it's pretty much saltwater with a little whey in it to make the pH right. It won't really smell like anything come spring because it will wash away with the melting snow and spring rains.

I bet it probably isn't quite so harsh on cars like road salt is.

On it's own, no, but if they're brining cheese with it, it's going to pick up aromatics off the cheese. Now it could just smell faintly like the residue in a bag a of cheese curd if at all, which would be awesome, or it could end up like the whey they spread on fields sometimes, which is worse than liquid manure.

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On it's own, no, but if they're brining cheese with it, it's going to pick up aromatics off the cheese. Now it could just smell faintly like the residue in a bag a of cheese curd if at all, which would be awesome, or it could end up like the whey they spread on fields sometimes, which is worse than liquid manure.

Yeah, field whey can be icky- but then it's more whey and often applied when it can warm up and sort of rot the whey. Brine has tons of salt and very little whey, so it sort of preserves the whey and since it's winter applied, not so much smell.

From personal experience, I find whey to have more food smell, but brine just smells salty.

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it's interesting, that's for sure. around here we still use sand a lot more than salt, but i've heard there's a lot of uncertainty over the effectiveness of sand.

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