Magnesium Chloride in ice-melt kills concrete

May 3, 2012 - PRLog -- Vancouver, BC – March 26, 2012
The use of Magnesium Chloride, also sometimes referred to as MAG, as an ice melter to melt the ice on concrete sidewalks, driveways or roads can be deadly.  Why take the risk?  
The use of magnesium chloride will cause "scaling" of your concrete. Scaling, as defined by the American Concrete Institute (ACI 302) and the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association in their series of "Concrete In Practice," http://www.nrmca.org/aboutconcrete/cips/02p.pdf "is the local flaking or peeling of a finished surface of hardened concrete as a result of freezing and thawing.”
The question always asked is: "so how does the magnesium chloride actually damage the concrete". According to Peter Snow, a concrete specialist from Burns Concrete in Idaho, the problem begins as the magnesium chloride comes into contact with the now deiced concrete surface and remains contained in the melt water, and permeates into the concrete. While deicing salts containing sodium, potassium and calcium are chemically innocuous to concrete, this is not true of magnesium. The magnesium ions accumulate and react with the cementitious compound calcium- silicate-hydrate converting it to magnesium-silicate-hydrate (or a mineral called brucite), which is non-cementitious in nature. In other words, a fundamental major mineralogical product of solidified concrete has now been chemically altered. Formation of magnesium-silicatehydrate breaks down the “glue” that binds aggregates together and concrete surfaces begin to deteriorate. The net effect is we now have a chemical and physical attack that concrete is not designed to withstand, nor be subjected to.

Studies, funded by the Iowa Department of Transportation DOT), have been undertaken by the Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences  http://www.ctre.iastate.edu/pubs/crossroads/71pcc.pdf at the Iowa State University, concluded that magnesium chloride produced significant concrete crumbling, fracturing and proved to be the most deleterious. There experiments took several cores of actual road concrete and subjected them to the wet/dry freeze thaw cycles they would normally undergo in winter conditions. They looked at different de-icers and found that magnesium chloride will actually decrease the service life of concretes.

In speaking with Kevin Wice, President of XYNYTH Manufacturing, http://www.xynyth.com/  a major North American manufacturer of environmentally friendly ice melters, he notes that many of their customers are becoming aware of the serious damage Magnesium Chloride creates.  Some have seen the damage first hand.  Further, Wice says “We protect our customers by not using any magnesium chloride in our products, because of this overwhelming amount of scientific evidence.”

If one takes a moment to read through the research http://www.xynyth.com/resource/icemelter-concrete/against... they will see much more scientific and empirical evidence illustrating the dangers of magnesium chloride. So the obvious question, even though magnesium chloride may be an inexpensive and powerful ice melter, why take the risk of using it on a concrete surface only to damage it and cause yourself great cost. Even worse the liability to the re-seller who sells the product knowing all the damage it will create.

There are ice melt products on the market today, like XYNYTH Manufacturing’s  http://www.xynyth.com/ Mountain Organic Natural Icemelter http://www.xynyth.com/products-tabs/MOI/mountain-organic-natural.html or GroundWorks Natural Icemelter, http://www.xynyth.com/products-tabs/GNI/groundworks-natural.html  just to name a couple, that an end-user can safely use on their concrete with no damaging side affects.