Making Sodium
Everything You Wanted to Know About Making Sodium
Making sodium, referring to sodium chloride (common salt), is done in great quantities for its use as a seasoning and preservative element. It is produced by evaporating seawater, brine and salt lakes. It can also be made by mining rock salt, also known as halite.
Sodium chloride is easily dissolved in water, but only slightly soluble in other liquids. It forms small and relatively colorless crystals.
Making sodium is one of the oldest processes done by chemical companies. Salt can be mined from deposits, or water can be introduced into the deposits, to dissolve the salt. The solution that results is pumped up to the surface to be claimed.
Often, seawater is evaporated in shallow lakes or basins. This used to be called bay salt, and is now generally referred to as sea salt or solar salt. Salt that you use on your dinner table is usually obtained from seawater, but it is not pure sodium chloride. It usually contains small amounts of dietary minerals, and also small amounts of substances like magnesium carbonate, to keep it from clumping.
You can actually get into making sodium yourself, should you desire to. You stir table salt into boiling water until it dissolves as much as it will. You can then soak a piece of cardboard in the solution until it gets soggy. Then place the cardboard on a plate or pan and set it in a sunny and warm place. Small salt crystals will form.
If you want to make larger salt crystals, you can start by making a seed crystal. You can do this by pouring a small amount of your solution on a plate, and removing the crystals from the bottom, to be used as seeds. Or, you can pour your solution into a smooth glass jar and hang a string into it. Crystals will form on the string.
To grow a big crystal from the seed crystal, pour your solution into a clean container, and allow it to cool. Then hang your seed crystal into the solution container and tie the string to a stick or pen sitting across the top of the container.
You will need to set the container in an area where it will not be jostled or disturbed. Allow the crystal to grow slowly by placing it in an area where the temperature is cooler and there is not a good deal of sunlight.
Making sodium seems exceptionally easy, but the demand for salt, both for seasoning and for preserving meats, means that more efficient ways are always being sought to make sodium. In 1971, a patent was applied for and granted, for a method that allows the waters of the Arctic to be harnessed to make more sodium. The patented method includes a more effective way of tapping into previously unused water areas for new salt supplies.