Common old salt

Salt (sodium chloride NaCl) is used by billions of people daily, people may not use it in their food but they do use it in some of the day to day stuff like in soap, glass and paper to name to name a few.

So where does salt come from well there are a few places it is made depending on what type of salt you want to use

Salt can be found in liquid or solid form. It can be found in oceans, lakes or rock beds buried under the earth or from oceans and lakes. Depending on where the salt comes from is what sort of salt you get at the end.

The two different productions of salt are:

• Salt from oceans and lakes, It can be produced by letting shallow holes of water dry up in the sun. The salt which remains is coarse grained. Salt produced this way is called solar salt. Each gallon of water produces more than 1/4 pound of salt.

• Salt buried in mines deep in the earth, is the main source of our table salt. Salt mines are found almost everywhere in the world.
  

This type of salt is obtained by two methods.

• In one, the salt veins in deep mines are broken loose by drills and explosives.The salt then is carried to the surface on elevators and put through a crusher
  

• The other method for obtaining salt, the hydraulic method it is done by the drilling of two wells deep into the earth’s salt beds. Fresh water is then pumped under high pressure into one of the wells through a pipe. When the water reaches the salt beds, it dissolves the salt, and the salty water, called brine, is then forced up to the surface through a pipe in the second well.

At refineries, the water is evaporated from the brine, leaving grains of salt. These grains are then placed in revolving cylinders, into which hot air is forced to speed the drying of the salt. The dried grains are then graded for purity, grain size, and their final use.

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