Scientists in Harbin, known as the "city of ice," in China's northernmost Heilongjiang Province, will build the city's first environmentally-friendly snow-melting device to get rid of snow piled up in the streets.

The device, called the "snow-melting room," covers 150 square meters. It is equipped with a steam boiler and two melting pools connected to the urban drainage works. When snow is dumped into the two pools which have an iron plate bottom, the iron plate heated by the boiler melts the snow quickly.

"The device is able to melt a truckload of snow in 15 minutes. Calculated on this basis, it will swallow 180 cubic meters of snow a day," said Jiang Yuanlu, in charge of building the device.

Harbin is frequently snow covered. Usually it doesn't melt until the spring of the following year as a result of the freezing ground temperature. To avoid harming the environment, the local government banned dumping of snow on farmland and in rivers.

Consequently, street clearers have to send the snow to construction sites where winter has halted work or to rubbish tips far from the city. When spring comes, the places where the snow was dumped become a terrible mess.

Once the technology has been officially assessed, the device will be built at Xiangfang District on a trial basis.

(Xinhua News Agency November 19, 2002)