Calcium Chloride is an industrial salt that is made from limestone using hydrochloric acid. It has a variety of uses that affect our everyday lives. [Source: Kemira.com] In order to see the breadth of how it impacts our daily living, we will break down some of the most common uses of calcium chloride.

3 Common Uses of Calcium Chloride

Melting Ice: Calcium chloride is used to melt ice. Because one of its chief uses is as a drying and dehydrating agent, it is used by many municipalities in de-icing roadways.

The process of de-icing helps to sever the bond fashioned between the ice and the pavement it's sticking to. Agents pre-wet the salt and sand mixture that goes on the road by adding calcium chloride to the mix. This prevents the concoction from blowing off to the side of the road before it can do its job, because it makes it stick.

This saves cities, states and counties money because it requires less salt and sand to clear the roadways of slippery ice. It also speeds up the effect of the salt on the roadway, allow it to melt the ice that much quicker.

Because of these advantages, most municipalities pre-wet their salt.

Tire Traction: You have calcium chloride to thank for those tires with good traction. Calcium chloride is used in the automotive industry to obtain better traction. How does this work?

Farmers were the first ones to figure out that if you add weight to a tractor, you get better traction. This was the genesis of the benefits of calcium chloride in tire traction.

The tractors farmers used were constantly getting bogged down when pulling heavy plows or other equipment. Eventually farmers noticed that by adding weight to the tires that were doing the actual pulling, they gained better traction. So, some farmers used counterweights on the front of the tractor to hold it down, which gave the rear wheels some spin action (eg, traction).

Instead of using weights, other farmers added fluid to the tires. This increased the overall tractor weight, which gave the tractor more pull through the wheels. This extra weight also gave the tires extra traction because the wheel lugs burrowed deeper into the ground for better stability.

This fluid that was added to the tires initially was water, which made sense because it was in plentiful supply. But, there was one problem.

It froze in cold weather. In order to prevent this, crafty farmers started to add antifreeze to the water. This cured the problem, but was not as cost effective as water. This is when calcium chloride started being added to the mix. It was cheap and effective.

Paper Manufacturing: The next time you take out a sheet of paper, think of calcium chloride. It helps to set paper dyes by providing artificial water hardness.

From the tires on our cars to the roads we drive on to the paper we write on, calcium chloride affects our every day existence.