Snow filtration
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Snow filtration is a system to deal with left-over snow in an environmentally friendly way. Every year, snow are removed from roads to ensure road safety. Roads are salted to ensure that snow melts on the road and won't freeze after melted. The convention method is by dumping the snow into rivers, which increases the salt concentration in the water.
[edit] Method
When spring arrives the snow are melted and salts were left behind which can be environmentally damaging as it creates hypertonic environment for plants that are close to the road. This method also ensures that only clean water goes into the ecosystem.
The snow runoff is collected and brought to a collection centre. It is directed through an oil and grit separator which also monitors the consistency of pollutants in the runoff. The oil and grit separator causes electrochemical and biological process to bind heavy metals and nutrients to the sediment through the process of Redox. At the same time, it reduces the amount of chlorine present in the runoff.
The runoff then flows into a catch basin which plants use the salt ions (e.g. K+, P3-, N3-) for their growth. The salts are absorbed by the plants which filtrate further, leaving only clean water to go back into streams and rivers.
