Snow Dragon: winter houdini: ice-melting machine makes fast work of snow in most extreme conditions.

• Author: Grenn, Ben
• Position: Editorial

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We're not blowing hot air when we say we melt snow faster than anyone else, said Snow Dragon President John Allin.

The Snow Dragon is the latest piece of equipment in snow-melting technology to hit the streets and roads in Alaska.

Snow-melting technology is not new, but relatively speaking, the Snow Dragon is. Largely started more than 30 years ago, the technology has grown in today's Snow Dragon, which was born a little more than five years ago. The Snow Dragon has only been in Alaska for a year.

The machine is designed for use at strip malls, schools and parking lots and is the ideal configuration for landscapers and contractors. The Snow Dragon (SND900 Model) is capable of melting 240 cubic yards of snow per hour or the equivalent of 12 to 14 tandem truckloads per hour.

"Snow is not our biggest challenge. Our biggest obstacle is educating the public about how environmentally safe the Snow Dragon really is," said Allin, whose business is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. The Snow Dragon is a subsidiary of Park-Ohio Holdings Corp.

In Alaska, Yukon Equipment Inc. is the sole, exclusive service operator for the snow-melting vehicle.

The snow-melting machine on wheels measures 25 feet long and is less than 8 1/2 feet wide.

FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON

While other snowmelter competing manufacturers may work with heating water with hot air bubbles to melt snow, it is slow and inefficient, says the Snow Dragon's patented process which is based on efficient fire-tube boiler technology. Nine million BTU/hr burners fire into specially designed burner tubes where the heat is transferred to the water, not released into the atmosphere. Ten to 15 minutes later, the water temperature is above 120 degrees. The Snow Dragon will melt snow for hours and the water will maintain a temperature of about 70 degrees. The snowmelters are designed to allow snow to be dumped into a melting hopper. This melting hopper is a large water bath heated to 120 degrees by heat exchanger tubes that are powered by the burners. It is this HOT water bath that is critical for snowmelters to work efficiently. Basically, the burner tubes heat the water and the hot water melts the snow.

"The melted snow exits cleaner than when it entered the unit," Allin exclaimed. It's proven to be much quieter then having city dump trucks haul the snow away from your neighborhood at six in the morning. And its environmentally...