Without salt, the process of digestion and metabolism is impossible, the taste of many dishes without salt seems incomplete. So the occupation beloved by our grandmothers, like preserving crispy cucumbers and spicy tomatoes, is also impossible without salt. Fortunately, salt deficiency in the world is not expected!
Pick your recipe
Instruction manual
1
Previously, salt was mined by the pool or cage method, now it is also used, but it is fully mechanized. On the seashore, a small pond is arranged in autumn, which is filled with water through a moat. After some time, pebbles, sand and clay settle to the bottom, and water is let into a second reservoir. In the spring, the turn of the third basin comes; water with a higher salt content enters it than in the original batch. During this time, the water managed to evaporate fairly. By the end of summer, when almost all the water has evaporated, a layer of salt appears on the surface. This salt was previously raked by hand and heaps formed from it 10-15 meters high, then the salt, which was washed with rain for a while, was loaded onto carts.
2
Fortunately, this slave manual labor was replaced by mechanization. Although in some countries, for example, Indonesia and India, manual extraction of salt was still preserved. In the twenties, the Soviet Union began to use salt harvesters, excavators and cutting machines, which significantly increased the volume of salt mined. In the Astrakhan region, on the border with Kazakhstan, there is Lake Baskunchak, its area is 106 square kilometers, it is covered in winter and early spring with a layer of 30% brine - brine.
3
Now salt is mined on this lake using a combine harvester - about 300 tons per hour! Previously, 200 breakers got the mass equivalent to this, and 120 loaders loaded it onto 300 camel carts. The same salt-mining combine does the initial washing and crushing of large pieces. Then the salt goes to the mills.
4
Salt is extracted from the bowels of the earth by a mine method. Over millions of years, salt has turned into a stone monolith. But temperature and high pressure can change the structure of the salt, make it malleable - it expands when heated more strongly than the surrounding rocks and begins to move upward. Some salt mountains extend to the surface of the earth, for example, Khoja-Mumyn, 900 meters high, and Lake Baskunchak is located on top of one of these salt domes. With the help of logging machines or blasting, blocks of salt are broken off from the mass of salt and crushed here (in the mine) and rise out.
5
Our friend you know - Extra salt is obtained by the vacuum method in salt factories. Through the wells, fresh water is poured into the thickness of salt lying underground. The resulting strong brine is pumped out and cleaned, then sent to chambers with reduced pressure - vacuum. At a pressure below atmospheric, the brine boils at a lower temperature and actively evaporates water. Salt in the form of small crystals precipitates, and it is separated by centrifuge from the remaining liquid. And so it turns out the salt "Extra" fine grinding.
note
By the end of the V millennium BC. e. salt production here reached industrial proportions, increasing to 4-5 tons. At least two thousand years ago, the extraction of salt began to be carried out also by evaporation of sea water. Salt is also mined by industrial treatment of halite (rock salt) mined from deposits located on the site of dried seas.
Useful advice
Depending on the place and method of production, salt has various names and, accordingly, properties: • rock salt - is extracted from sedimentary rocks; • self-sedimenting salt - extracted from salt lakes (deposited by itself); • table salt - produced by the pool method from sea and lake waters. Such salt is mined by installing mines and extracting salt from galleries or chambers produced in the thickness of the salt layer or dome.