WHILE natural snow does not cost ski resort operators anything, most of them cannot totally rely on Mother Nature. When natural precipitation fails, they must reach for their snow-making machines and that is not a cheap process.
But a Slovak inventor has come up with a better way to make snow that not only improves its quality but also reduces the costs of doing so. Last December, the firm Snow-Paradox set off to present the inventor’s new technology to global markets, the Hospodárske Noviny daily wrote in mid December.
The technology developed by the Slovak inventor, who did not want to be identified, was tested on ski slopes at Štrbské Pleso in the High Tatras last winter. According to Ján Renko from Snow-Paradox, ski resort operators from several European countries including Poland, Austria, Germany, Italy and Russia have shown an interest in the technology, which was discovered somewhat by chance.
“The inventor was telling me how his device could help me save on heating costs,” Renko said, as quoted by the daily. “If his technology adjusts the water in such a way that it is heated faster, I asked him whether this also worked vice versa, that it could modify the water so that it could be cooled faster.”
The inventor responded that he was also working on modifying water for cooling systems and that led to the idea of making physical changes to the properties of water to make better man-made snow.
Snow-Paradox writes on its website that the equipment operates on the principle that water can be modified by silicates and electrodes from precious metals. As water flows through the equipment it receives an endothermic impulse that changes the supra-molecular structure of the water and increases its propensity to lose heat.
According to Snow-Paradox, its snow-making equipment can save about 30 to 40 percent of the costs of electricity, depending on the ambient temperature and moisture level, because the water flow increases through the snow gun. The company also writes that the snow generated with this technology is of a higher quality and is closer to natural snow in comparison with traditional snow-making methods.
