What are the uses of industrial salt?

Industrial salt has a wide range of uses in industry. It is a colorless cubic crystal or fine crystalline powder that is easily soluble in water. The main products of the chemical industry, such as hydrochloric acid, caustic soda, soda ash, ammonium chloride, and chlorine, are mainly produced using industrial salt as raw materials.

Industrial salt is produced by introducing underground brine into salt fields, then drying it in the sun, concentrating it, and crystallizing it to obtain a crude product. Seawater can also be heated by steam, filtered through a sand filter, and finally concentrated by ion exchange membrane electrodialysis to obtain brine. Rock salt and salt lake brine can also be used as raw materials, dried in the sun, and then produced as raw salt. When underground brine and well salt are used as raw materials, industrial salt is obtained by three-effect or four-effect evaporation concentration, crystallization, and centrifugal separation.

Eight major uses of industrial salt:

(1) In light industry, salt is often added to soap making to maintain the appropriate viscosity of the solution;

(2) In the dye industry, raw materials such as soda ash are directly produced from salt, and almost every step in the dye production process consumes a certain amount of salt;

(3) In the leather industry, a large amount of leather is required. During storage and transportation, the raw leather needs to be treated with corrosion protection to prevent or inhibit microbial erosion to avoid reducing the quality of the leather. The commonly used corrosion protection method in the leather industry is the salt drying method;

(4) In the metallurgical industry, salt is used as a chlorination roasting agent and quenching agent in the metallurgical industry;

(5) In the machinery industry, during casting, salt can be used as an excellent binder for non-ferrous metal and alloy casting medium-sized sand;

(6) In the building materials industry, soda ash made from salt is the main raw material for producing glass;

(7) During oil well drilling, in order to protect the integrity of the rock salt layer core, salt needs to be added to the mud as a stabilizer;

(8) In the chemical industry, salt is the mother of the chemical industry, and the chemical industry is the basic industry of the national economy.