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Heated Ice Scrapers | |||||||||||||||||
One of the most disappointing things about cold winter days is all the ice you have to scrape off your car just to go to school/work/extra-curricular activities. Not only is this a pain for myself to do, but when I get on the road, I see many new, inexperienced drivers who are just too lazy to scrape more than two square centimeters off their windshield, which poses an immense safety risk to anyone driving. In order to decrease the happening of this, I propose a heated ice scraper. It wouldn't be heated by electrical use, as I'm aware of the dangers that the melted ice would have when combined with electricity. Rather, an exothermic process referred to as "slaking lime" would be used to generate the needed warmth. In the process of slaking lime, Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) is superheated, which causes it to release CO2 and Calcium Oxide (CaO). Packets containing Calcium Oxide and its reactant, water, in seperate sides of a plastic, non-reactant package. When someone wanted to add a quick boost of heat to their defrosting efforts, they would break the package, as one breaks a glowstick. This would produce Calcium Hydroxide (Ca(OH)2), as well as a useful amount of heat.
Tealeaf, Dec 08 2007
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A hair dryer works quite nicely.
I didn't consider that. Still, something portable would be nice for when a storm hits and you're away from home. Even if you would have the extension cords ready to carry around, you might have a little trouble finding a nearby outlet to plug the hairdryer into.
Here in Helsinki the overwhelming majority of cars have oil heaters as standard equipment so that cars are plugged in at night when parked and a timer turns the heater on about an hour before the car is started in the morning. An electric heater inside the car blows warm air to make the car comfortable for use in the winter. The same outlet in most parking places can be used for the hair dryer.
There are heated scrapers on the market that plug into your cigarette lighter in your car.
If you go to Google.com and type in "heated Ice Scrapers" you will find a ton of sites with a whole variety of scrapers listed.
I have a 12v heated ice scraper, but it's more of a novelty than a useful product.Except for a garage-kept, pre-heated car, nothing I've come across in the past 40 years beats the original "Ice Breaker" made from machined plexiglass (but they make them out of cheap molded plastic now).
As far as hair dryers for de-icing, I have a 12v hair dryer that plugs into the cigarette lighter socket. Takes too long, I can have the entire car scraped clear in less time than the hair dryer takes to de-ice the windshield. What I really need is an inflatable garage that can hold a 12" snow load and could stow, folded up, in my car trunk.
On the other hand, the 12v hair dryer works great inside the car on mornings when I just need to clear the mist from my breath on the inside, before the engine warms up.
Slaking lime is a one-time reaction, which requires liquid water to activate.
For always available point source heat, nothing beats electricity, a burning fuel of some sort second.