Cougsfan
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2008
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- Eastern Washington State
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- Ferguson TO35, Branson 4720CH
Here is an article that discusses methanol mixed with water and what happens when it freezes.
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2015/pdf/1894.pdf
It is kind of written in scientificy (?) language aimed at what happens on other planets but hopefully you can wade through it. Windshield washer fluid is an eutectic mixture of methanol and water as per their subject matter they are referencing. At cold temperatures the water precipitates out of the mixture and you have a mixture of water and methanol. The water then freezes into small ice crystals suspended in the still liquid methanol, making the non-solid slush I was talking about. Another thing it points out, as you raise the pressure the freezing point lowers. And the mixture in tire is under pressure. I didn't take time to convert all the degree kelvin numbers in the phase diagrams to Fahrenheit, nor to research the percent methanol versus water in ww fluid. But it sure makes me think that you wont ever see, even in Alaska, to make the entire liquid mixture to freeze into a totally solid state. Hope this helps.
By the way, I highly suspect the same thing happens in beet juice (rimguard); very small ice crystals form in the rimguard but stay suspended in the remaining liquid. The more ice crystals that precipitates out; the lower the freeze temperature becomes for the remaining liquid.
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2015/pdf/1894.pdf
It is kind of written in scientificy (?) language aimed at what happens on other planets but hopefully you can wade through it. Windshield washer fluid is an eutectic mixture of methanol and water as per their subject matter they are referencing. At cold temperatures the water precipitates out of the mixture and you have a mixture of water and methanol. The water then freezes into small ice crystals suspended in the still liquid methanol, making the non-solid slush I was talking about. Another thing it points out, as you raise the pressure the freezing point lowers. And the mixture in tire is under pressure. I didn't take time to convert all the degree kelvin numbers in the phase diagrams to Fahrenheit, nor to research the percent methanol versus water in ww fluid. But it sure makes me think that you wont ever see, even in Alaska, to make the entire liquid mixture to freeze into a totally solid state. Hope this helps.
By the way, I highly suspect the same thing happens in beet juice (rimguard); very small ice crystals form in the rimguard but stay suspended in the remaining liquid. The more ice crystals that precipitates out; the lower the freeze temperature becomes for the remaining liquid.