About salt There is much to learn about salt.

Salt, sodium chloride, touches our lives more than any other chemical compound. The chemical properties and physical properties of sodium chloride are a treasure to mankind. Salt or salt-derived products are ubiquitous in our material world and the very cells of our bodies swim in a saline solution. We take for granted the salt crystals that make our foods safe and palatable and we give thanks for salts lifesaving properties when applied to slick winter roads. Most are unaware of the 14,000 known uses for salt, how its produced and our success in ensuring the environmental compatibility as it provides the foundation for the quality of our lives. Mankind evolved from the sea and we have a saline sea within us as do all fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. Environmental author Rachel Carson is best known for her book on birds, but she also wrote The Sea Around Us offering this insight: "When the animals went ashore to take up life on land, they carried part of the sea in their bodies, a heritage which they passed on to their children and which even today links each land animal with its origins in the ancient sea." Our blood has the same chemical balance of sodium, potassium and calcium found in the oceans. Salt occurs naturally all over the world as the mineral halite, as well as in seawater and salt lakes. Some salt is one the surface, the dried-up residue of ancient seas like the famed Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Surface salt depositions and man-made saltworks can be seen from space. In ocean coastal areas, saltwater can "intrude" on underground freshwater supplies, complicating the lives of those who provide our drinking water supplies. Scientists have also found salt in meteors and on Mars where its presence signals the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. Chemical properties Tight ionic bonding unites the elements sodium and chloride to make the chemical compound sodium chloride. Man has discovered a vast variety of ways to harness the chemical properties of salt to improve our lives. Chemically, there are many salts; the resulting compound created by reacting an acid and a base; positively charged metal atoms (the sodium ion in the case of common salt) replacing the

negatively charged hydrogen atoms of an acid, leaving the chloride ion. Physical properties Sodium chloride crystals are cubic in form and salt crystals are commonly used to exemplify crystalline structure and many science students are familiar with the process of growing salt crystals. Its color varies from colorless, when pure, to white, gray or brownish when in the solid, halite, form. Salt dissolves readily in water. Salt crystals can be grown in various sizes and salt companies prepare particles in a wide variety of sizes to meet customer needs. Where is salt found in nature ? There is enough salt in the oceans of the world that we could use salt to sculpt a full-scale topographic map of Europe five times over. Oceans contain an average of 2.7% salt, by weight (total solids in seawater average 3.5% and 77% of that is salt). In addition, evaporation of ancient oceans has left vast deposits of solid (rock) salt over huge areas of the world. These deposits can be in the form of bedded sedimentary layers or deep salt domes. Will we run out of salt? Never. Salt is the most common and readily available nonmetallic mineral in the world; it is so abundant, accurate estimates of salt reserves are unavailable. In the United States there are an estimated 55 trillion metric tons. Since the world uses 240 million tons of salt a year, U.S. reserves alone could sustain our needs for 100,000 years. And some of that usage is naturally recycled after use. The enormity of the Earths underground salt deposits, combined with the saline vastness of the Earths oceans makes the supply of salt inexhaustible. Facts & Statistics Unlike other strategic minerals, salt is widely available and produced in countless production units spread around the globe. The rapid industrialization of East Asia and South Asia have propelled increases in world salt production with China just easing past the United States as the worlds largest salt producing country.

Salt production technologies Three distinct technologies are used to produce salt, but most in North America comes from rock salt mines. Oceans cover most of the Earth. They always have. The salt in the oceans, today and in geologic eras past, is the salt we use today. We use three basic technologies to obtain our salt. From the oceans and saline lakes (e.g. Great Salt Lake, Dead Sea, Caspian Sea, Issak Kul in Kyrgyzstan, Lake Eyre in Australia and Chilwa in Malawi), we extract solar salt, often called sea salt. From underground deposits of ancient ocean beds now covered by varying depths of soil (and water many large salt deposits lie beneath the ocean floor), we obtain salt in two ways: Rock salt (geologically, halite) is produced by excavating a shaft allowing miners to access the salt deposit to chip or blast it into pieces small enough to haul to the surface and evaporated salt (sometimes called refined salt) is produced by solution mining the underground deposit and removing the water from the saline brine pumped to the surface.

Solar salt (sea salt) Commercial solar salt is produced by natural evaporation of seawater or brine in large, diked, earthen concentration ponds called condensers. Seawater averages about 3.5% NaCl (salty lakes like the Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake can be much higher) when it enters the condensors. Climate is very important in solar salt production. The sun and wind provide the energy to evaporate the water and raise the salt concentration to the point of crystallization, 25.8% NaCl (25.4o B). As the water concentrates, calcium carbonate is the first chemical to crystallize. By moving the increasingly-saline brine through a series of ponds, sometimes over a period that can be as long as two years, the calcium carbonate is thus removed from the final salt product. When the concentration has increased to the most favorable crystallizing level, 26o B, the brine is introduced into the crystallizing ponds. As salt crystallization proceeds, the concentration continues to increase. At 29 or 30o B between 72% and 79% of the total salt has

been crystallized. Proper brine control during concentration and crystallization results in salt of purity of >99.7% NaCl. The crystallizing pond is then drained of the remaining highly concentrated magnesium brine (called bitterns because of its taste) which are either discharged or further processed for other minerals. Mobile harvester equipment then strips the newly-deposited layer of salt crystals and they are washed (in clean brine to prevent loss), crushed and sometimes dried in kilns or fluidized-beds driers.

Rock salt (halite) Rock salt is mined from underground deposits by drilling and blasting. Deposits are reached through a circular shaft, typically about 20 feet in diameter and as deep as 2,000 feet, depending on the depth and location of the salt deposit. Shafts are lined with concrete, at least through the overburden and into the top of the salt deposit, and often all the way to the shaft bottom. Mining methods depend on whether the salt is configured as a relatively horizontal sedimentary deposit or a more vertical salt dome. The differences in mining methods depend on the thickness and structure of the salt deposit. Bedded or layered deposits are mined

using the room and pillar mining method, as horizontal rooms or entries of about 10-25 feet high and 50 feet wide. Openings or crosscuts are created perpendicular to the length of the rooms to connect the rooms at planned intervals. Salt pillars are left in place to provide structural support for the overlying roof and other layers. Most roomand-pillar mines recover about 45-65% of the salt available, with the remainder left behind as pillar supports with margins both above and below the mined area. Each day, based on production needs, several rooms are blasted, each blast bringing down 350-900 tons.

In salt domes, after a level of room-and-pillar extraction is completed, the usual practice is to bench the mine by drilling and blasting the floor extending the excavation downward and removing vast quantities with each blast. Typically salt is mined using large, diesel-powered equipment designed for undercutting, drilling, blasting, loading and transporting the blasted salt. More recently, continuous mining machines have been more common; formerly they produced too many unusable fines. Diesel-powered trucks take the salt freed by blasting to a system of crushers and conveyor belts and, ultimately, to the hoist or skip. Sometimes the salt is stockpiled in the mine awaiting hoisting; other operations maintain surface storage stockpiles. Each skip can lift 18-20 tons of salt and they move quickly a large mine may be able to hoist up to 900 tons an hour.

Evaporated salt (refined salt)

Salt purity is defined as the percentage of sodium chloride in the final crystal; a higher number means fewer impurities. The impurities are other minerals, not necessarily detrimental to the salts intended use, but not contributing to the benefit of salt. Solar salt and rock salt both can attain 99% salt purity, but often have far less. Sometimes, far, far less. The purest grades of salt are evaporated salt. Most of us use a table salt which is evaporated salt. It is manufactured using a system of pans which boil away the water from salt brine. The brine, which can itself be purified, is crystallized under controlled conditions, often in plants that resemble food processing plants where much of the evaporated salt is destined. The process has two steps: obtaining the brine, usually from a solution mine, and then thermally reducing it to crystallized salt.

Salt, essential nutrient Salt is an essential nutrient. This is a technical descriptor, not marketing hype. An essential nutrient is one required for life that the body cannot produce itself and which is required for good health. For humans, salt is as essential as water. We can perish from too little salt as we can of thirst. The human body contains about eight ounces of salt. The amount of salt is regulated in our bodies by our kidneys and by perspiration. One component of salt, sodium (Na), is involved in muscle contraction including heartbeat, nerve impulses, and the digestion of body-building protein. Sodium is easily absorbed and is active in the absorption of other nutrients in the small intestine. Sodium is the major extracellular electrolyte responsible for regulating water balance, pH, and osmotic pressure. It is important in nerve conduction. Because of sodium's importance to your body, several interacting mechanisms, including generation of hormones angiotensin and aldosterone, adjust the system in the event of consumption of insufficient amounts of salt which would threaten the body's nerves and muscles and interference with the sodium-potassium "pump" which adjusts intra- and extracellular pressures. If your salt intake varies widely, these mechanisms activate to assure that your body remains healthy, maintaining a relatively constant blood pressure. The other component of salt, chloride (Cl) is also essential to good health. It preserves acid-base balance in the body, aids potassium absorption, supplies the essence of digestive stomach acid, and enhances the ability of the blood to carry carbon dioxide from respiring tissues to the lungs. Because salt is essential to good health, the human body is hard-wired with an innate salt appetite. Around the world, population salt intakes vary somewhat, but nearly all fall within what eminent medical researcher Bjrn Folkow termed the hygienic safety range of sodium intake, between 2,300 mg/day and 4,600 mg/day or even 5,750 mg/day. In common English measures, that would be one to two or two and a half teaspoons of salt per day. A few remote peoples lacking access to salt apparently consume far below 2,300 mg/day sodium while a few others who consume diets heavy with salted fish and vegetables, but virtually every society with access to salt consumes

amounts within the safety range. Intakes in North America and most of Europe average about 3,500 md/day --- right in the middle of this range. Some public health agencies feel these intake levels are too high, but consumption levels are unchanged over the past century when medical instruments allowed accurate measurements. Predictable consumption has made salt an ideal vehicle to fortify. Iodized salt is used by 70% of the worlds population to protect against mental retardation due to Iodine Deficiency Disorders (IDD). Many countries fortify salt with fluoride against dental caries in situations where fluoridating drinking water is inappropriate. And a growing number fortify salt with iron to prevent anemia

Salt and food technology Beyond taste, the principle properties of salt enable cooks and food makers to use salt as a: Preservative: Salt preserves foods by creating a hostile environment for certain microorganisms. Within foods, salt brine dehydrates bacterial cells, alters osmotic pressure and inhibits bacterial growth and subsequent spoilage. Texture Aid: Salt strengthens gluten in bread dough, providing uniform grain, texture and dough strength. With salt present, gluten holds more water and carbon dioxide, allowing the dough to expand without tearing. Salt improves the tenderness in cured meats such as ham by promoting the binding of water by protein. It also gives a smooth, firm texture to processed meats. Salt develops the characteristic rind hardness in cheese and helps produce the desirable, even consistency in cheese and other foods such as sauerkraut. Binder: Salt helps extract the proteins in processed and formed meats, providing binding strength between adjacent pieces of meat. Water binding properties are increased and, as a result, cooking losses are reduced. Salt increases the solubility of muscle proteins in water. In sausage making, stable emulsions are formed when the salt-soluble protein solutions coat the finely-formed globules of fat, providing a binding gel consisting of meat, fat and moisture. Fermentation Control: In baked products, salt controls fermentation by retarding and controlling the rate of

fermentation, important in making a uniform product. During pickle making, salt brine is gradually increased in concentration, reducing the fermentation rate as the process proceeds to completion. Salt is also used to control fermentation in making cheese, sauerkraut and summer sausage. Color Developer: Salt promotes the development of color in ham, bacon, hotdogs and sauerkraut. Used with sugar and nitrate or nitrite, salt produces a color in processed meats which consumers find appealing. Salt enhances the golden color in bread crust by reducing sugar destruction in the dough and increasing carmelization.

Salt in industry Salt is all around you. Many, even most, of the products you see are produced from salt or using salt in their manufacture. Industries use most of the salt produced in the world today. The biggest single use of salt is also one of the least known. Salt is the feedstock for the chlor-alkali chemical industry, just as oil is for the petrochemical industry. The difference: we are not running out of salt! Chlorine chemistry brings consumers clean water, soaps and detergents, many medications, PVC pipes for our homes, cell phones, cosmetics, protective suits for SCUBA divers and astronauts, digital cameras, flat panel TVs, electron microscopes, solar panels for energy production. The list is essentially endless. Manufacturing textiles, glass, rubber, leather, even drilling oil wells, depends on salt. Salt has 14,000 known uses.

Salt in chlorine chemistry Salt is the feedstock of the chlor-alkali industry which produces chlorine, caustic soda and the myriad other products formed from these basic chemicals. The chemical industry well-describes the chemical genealogy of salt with its Chlorine Tree. Globally, chlorine chemistry is the single largest market for salt, although in the U.S., where there are numerous areas with exploitable salt deposits, the salt produced for chemical production is often extracted directly by chemical companies and not by salt producers. In Europe and Japan, the chlor-alkali industry is more likely to buy its salt from a salt company. Chemical companies pass an electrical current through saturated salt brine in a salt bridge, producing a oxidation-reduction (redox) chemical reaction. This electrolysis separates the gaseous chlorine, (Cl2), from the sodium hydroxide (caustic soda). Chlorine is an effective disinfectant and bleach. We use it to keep drinking water safe. And swimming pools. Downstream, vinyl chloride and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and their derivatives are produced from chlorine. Caustic soda is used in pulp processing, and to make cellulose chemicals and their derivatives. Sodium chlorite is used in the textile industry. Other chemicals manufactured from salt are metallic sodium and sodium chlorate. Until 1986, salt was used to produce synthetic soda ash (NaCO3) in the U.S. by the Solvay process. Soda ash is now obtained naturally from trona mines. Salt-based chemicals are used: To cool nuclear reactors (liquid sodium) To make brass and bronze (metallic sodium) To make case-hardened steel, fumigating materials, and are used to make the dye, indigo (sodium cyanide) To produce polymers used to make plastics, synthetic fibers, and synthetic rubber (chlorine) In crude oil refining and for making pesticides (chlorine) To make bleach and to disinfect public drinking water supplies and treat municipal sewage (chlorine) To make glass, rayon, polyester and other synthetic fibers, plastics, soaps and detergents (caustic soda)

Extensively in the manufacture of pulp and paper, dyes and ceramic glazes (sodium sulfate) In manufacturing glass, pulp and paper, and rayon (sodium carbonate) In making synthetic rubber and in cleaning gas and oil wells (hydrochloric acid) In textile manufacturing, processing leather, making glass and neutralizing acids (sodium bicarbonate) As an ingredient in fertilizers and explosives (sodium nitrate)

Due to security concerns with the transportation of chlorine in tanker trucks and rail cars, including chemical terrorism (aka "toxic trains"), some chlorine users are using on-site chlorinators for saltwater swimming pools, drinking water purification and wastewater disinfection.

Other industrial uses of salt It would be difficult to list all of the thousands of industries that use salt as a raw material or ingredient. The major industries include: Textile and dyeing. Salt is used to fix dyes and to standardize dye batches Metal processing, such as aluminum refining. Salt is used to remove impurities Rubber manufacturing. Salt separates the rubber from latex Oil and gas drilling. Salt is used to produce a drilling mud that prevents widening of bore holes in rock salt strata, inhibits fermentation, and increases mud density Pharmaceuticals. Salt is used for tablet and caplet polishing, the production of intraveneous saline solutions and for manufacturing hemodialysis solutions used for kidney machines Animal hide processing and leather tanning. Salt is used to cure, preserve, and tan hides Pigment manufacture. Salt is a grinding agent Ceramics manufacture. Salt acts to vitrify heated clays Soap making. Salt separates glycerol from water Detergent production. Salt is used as a filler.

Just a few of salts other industrial uses include.

Windows, lenses and prisms and in high power laser systems (sodium chloride) In molten salt reactors to produce and separate transuranic elements (sodium chloride) In molten salt incineration of high explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics (sodium chloride) In salt bath furnaces for a number of heat treatment applications such as: austenitizing, martempering, neutral hardening, tempering nitriding, carburizing,and dip brazing (sodium chloride) To generate electricity in salinity gradient solar ponds (sodium chloride) As an antifreeze agent in geothermal heating and cooling (sodium chloride) To combat greenhouse gases by sequestering industrial carbon/carbon dioxide underground (sodium chloride) And salt mines host experiments in physics and astrophysics that require precise conditions for accurate measurement (sodium chloride)