Separating Salt out of Water

22 Comments

Separating Salt out of Water

Salt (NaCl) is a natural mineral made up of white cube-shaped crystals composed of two elements, sodium, and chlorine. It is translucent, colorless, odorless (officially, though we think you can smell the freshness of the sea in one of our boxes) and has a distinctive and characteristic taste. Salt occurs naturally in many parts of the world in mineral form and has been mined for thousands of years. Chemically, sea salt is the same.

Gastronomically, it’s very different. I’m going to show you how salt can be separated out of water.

Things you’ll need: a beaker, water, salt (ocean water would be better), and an alcohol lamp.20170627_143414

  1. Mix 50 ml water with 19 grams of salt together, stir the solution until dissolve.
  2. Light the alcohol lamp and place the beaker on the stand.20170627_143509
  3. Wait until the water is all gone (don’t let the salt be in there for too long, or it will burn)

Here’s my salt. It’s fluffy and soft like snow when I touched it.20170627_191307

I wish I could weigh it and see the difference from where I started.

Salt evaporation ponds, also called salterns, salt works or salt pans, are shallow artificial ponds designed to extract salts from sea water or other brines. The seawater or brine is fed into large ponds and water is drawn out through natural evaporation which allows the salt to be subsequently harvested. The ponds also provide a productive resting and feeding ground for many species of waterbirds, which may include endangered species. The ponds are commonly separated by levees.

Natural salt pans are geological formations that are also created by water evaporating and leaving behind salts. Some salt evaporation ponds are only slightly modified from their natural version, such as the ponds on Great Inagua in the Bahamas, or the ponds in Jasiira, a few kilometres south of Mogadishu, where seawater is trapped and left to evaporate in the sun.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_evaporation_pond

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Categories: Chemistry

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22 Comments »

  2. I wonder how long did it take for all the water to evaporate?
    A very informative post on salt and salt pans etc. We could do with a desalination plant here in Cape Town, as we are not getting enough rain fall, but live right by the ocean.

    Liked by 1 person

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