Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

[Michaelangelica]

How do you break- chemically- salt into its's component parts sodium and chloride?
When that is done can sodium and chloride be changed or broken into anything else?
ie Can salt be neutralised, changed or otherwise 'got-rid-of?

Does the States have a soil salinity problem?

Would salt in the soil be the reason I am getting a Ph reading of 9 in the soil around my salt water pool?

[hallenrm]

Originally Posted by Chacmool

Salts are indeed very interesting. Especially the way humans seem to need and interact with them. When I don't take certain chronic medications for a day or two, I get an absolutely insatiable craving for salt. I wonder why that is?

People who suffer from hypertension (high blood pressure) are generally advised by doctors to reduce their intake of sodium chloride in their diet, this is so, because salt causes an increase in osmotic pressure of the body fluids. Thus it may be assumed that the body of a person suffering from hypertension gets used to higher concentration of salt in their body fluids.

Your insatiable craving for salt, can be thus explained, Chacmool

[hallenrm]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

How do you break- chemically- salt into its's component parts sodium and chloride?
When that is done can sodium and chloride be changed or broken into anything else?
ie Can salt be neutralised, changed or otherwise 'got-rid-of?

Does the States have a soil salinity problem?

Would salt in the soil be the reason I am getting a Ph reading of 9 in the soil around my salt water pool?

Salt, as I said earlier is made up of sodium ions and chloride ions. Both sodium and Chlorine are chemical elements and an ion is a charged atom or molecule. Atoms can be broken down only into electrons, protons and (neutrons). These are the particles that make up all the elements.

When an ionic compound, such as salt, is dissolved in water, it breaks down into its ions.

Sodium and chloride ions being ions of chemical elements can only be broken down into electrons, protons and neutrons, and to do so requires a hell lot of energy.

Sodium Chloride is a neutral salt, that is, it is a product of netralization of a strong acid, hydrochloric acid, with a strong alkali, sodium hydroxide.

This is manifested in the pH of salt solutions in water (also called aqueous solution) to be 7 at room temperature. All aqueos solutions that have a pH 7 are neutral. So if you are getting a pH 9 for your soil, it is basic (alkaline) and this higher pH cannot be due to the presence of salt alone.

To bring down the pH of your soil, you may add to it some acidic salt, say ammonium chloride.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by hallenrm

People who suffer from hypertension
Your insatiable craving for salt, can be thus explained, Chacmool

YES, Amazing perspicacity!

My doc says I have high PB (Diastolic systolic/ -the lower one especially).
He has put me on Coversyl all this does (I think) is take some water out of your blood so less blood= less pressure. Seems a bit dumb.
I am about to start myself on small, long term, dose of ginseng (American, Chinese or Korean). This tones up all the blood vessels and muscles around them and helps lower cholesterol (which is also a little high).

The medical advice about dietary salt reduction varies.

I was interested in salt before diagnosed with high BP

Soil salinity and water are becoming big problems here. We had some gentle rain last night the first since Feb 26!
The Outback farmers are really suffering.
Yet the North & NE (Qld and NT) are suffering from three major hurricanes and massive flooding!

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by hallenrm

Salt, as I said earlier is made up of sodium ions and chloride ions.
When an ionic compound, such as salt, is dissolved in water, it breaks down into its ions.

Sodium and chloride ions being ions of chemical elements can only be broken down into electrons, protons and neutrons, and to do so requires a hell lot of energy.

This is manifested in the pH of salt solutions in water (also called aqueous solution) to be 7 at room temperature. All aqueos solutions that have a pH 7 are neutral. So if you are getting a pH 9 for your soil, it is basic (alkaline) and this higher pH cannot be due to the presence of salt alone.

To bring down the pH of your soil, you may add to it some acidic salt, say ammonium chloride.

Thanks for your help

I have put sulphur on the ph9 soil - that seems to be helping a little.
I don't seem to be able to buy ammonium chloride from the local nurseries.
but thank you for your advice I have never encountered soil that alkaline before and no garden experts seam to know the answer. i wonder how it became that alkaline-
the soil might be remnants of an old lake- but you would think that with lots of shells and things it would be acid?

I get lost with atoms. I just can't imagine anything that small;. if I can't see it in my head I can't understand it. Yes I know its like little solar systems etc but I still haven't got a handle on it.
So I gather I will need a nuclear reactor to break up salt any further than sodium and chlorine?

OK can anything be added to sodium or chlorine to make them something different?
Something innocuous say that could go on soil?

This was in Wikipedia
Ionization potential

The energy required to detach an electron in its lowest energy state from an atom or molecule of a gas with less net electric charge is called the ionization potential, or ionization energy. The nth ionization energy of an atom is the energy required to detach its nth electron after the first n − 1 electrons have already been detached.

Each successive ionization energy is markedly greater than the last. Particularly great increases occur after any given block of atomic orbitals is exhausted of electrons. For this reason, ions tend to form in ways that leave them with full orbital blocks. For example, sodium has one valence electron, in its outermost shell, so in ionized form it is commonly found with one lost electron, as Na+. On the other side of the periodic table, chlorine has seven valence electrons, so in ionized form it is commonly found with one gained electron, as Cl−
Wikipedia

[hallenrm]

Here's a link that you will probably find useful.

http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortn...6-1994/ph.html

[Chacmool]

Originally Posted by hallenrm

People who suffer from hypertension (high blood pressure) are generally advised by doctors to reduce their intake of sodium chloride in their diet, this is so, because salt causes an increase in osmotic pressure of the body fluids. Thus it may be assumed that the body of a person suffering from hypertension gets used to higher concentration of salt in their body fluids.

Your insatiable craving for salt, can be thus explained, Chacmool

Thanks for the reply, hallenrm! I actually have LOW blood pressure. I should have mentioned the specific medication I'm taking: it's for bipolar disorder. If I even skip one day, I just want to eat salt all the time. But no matter how much salt or salty foods I eat, it's never enough. Only taking the medication again makes the craving go away. I'm usually quite fond of salt, but these cravings are unbearable. I wonder if it has something to do with the calcium and magnesium levels in the brain?

[Mercedes Benzene]

How do you break- chemically- salt into its's component parts sodium and chloride?
When that is done can sodium and chloride be changed or broken into anything else?
ie Can salt be neutralised, changed or otherwise 'got-rid-of?

Salt can be decomposed through the electrolysis whilst in molten form (which I would imagine would take a lot of heat). The sodium and chlorine will gather near their respective electrodes (based on charge). I would imagine that very specialized equipment would be needed however, since one would not want the elemental sodium and chlorine to react with one another. That would be very violent.

[Michaelangelica]

Well I found a salt discussion group!
Apparently there are 183 other Nerds like me out there!

"Welcome to Yahoo! Groups! Thanks for your interest in the group commonsalt.
Learn about commonsalt (See the homepage for this group)
Members: 184
Date Founded: Nov 17, 2000
Mailing list type: Members Discussion
common-SALT"

Does anyone know if there are any bacteria that can break down salt?

Here are a few miscellaneous gems I found on the way:-

Due to the recent tsunami disaster, the croplands in the coastal areas of Sri Lanka
were inundated by seawater leading to development of salinity.
Another way to make the field productive again is to chemically change salt that is more harmful to plants to chemicals that plants can easily tolerate. ??

The invention of a mobile drinking water producer:-
http://www.webzine.bayer.com/researc...r/page2578.htm

The majority of our blue planet, about 70 percent, is covered with water, a fact that might lead you to believe we have access to an inexhaustible supply. However, 97.5 percent of the 1.4 billion cubic meters of water on Earth is made up of undrinkable saltwater from the oceans and other sources. In other words, potable water is alarmingly scarce. Although the remaining 2.5 percent is freshwater, most of it is found within frozen polar caps and glaciers. Consequently, less than one percent remains for consumption, and the majority of the world's population, particularly in developing countries, has little or no access to this small fraction.
Request to join commonsalt

Traditionally, the study of man has been based on the study of his tools and artifacts, ideas and religion. It has failed to take
into account items essential to man's survival. Such an item is Salt, neglected almost totally by both historians and archaeologists.
http://www.salt.org.il/main.htm
Such was the importance of salt that the words, 'war' and 'peace' originate from the word for salt & bread in Ancient Hebrew and Arabic - The first war that mankind initiated was most probably over 'salt' supplies.


Chinese sophisticated technology approx 300-400 AD -included drilling bamboo pipes to great depths to bring salt brines to the surface. Oil traces found in the same wells led to the same use of this technology in modern oil production, though the modern use of oil was only discovered much later, when it ushered in the period of Industrial Revolution

One camel train would normally consist of...a thousand animals, each carrying 150 kg of salt

The altar in the temple of Jerusalem WAS BUILT to handle hundreds of animal sacrifices a day, and included the salting and dehydrating process of the carcasses, producing "kosher' hygienic 'cleansed' meat to the inhabitants

The Roman 'limes' in Palestine during the
Salt was So important to the Romans, that the 'limes' in Palestine particularly during the period of Herod surrounded the Dead Sea, and was specifically to control the salt trade mainly from Mt. Sdom, salt mountain.

The word for 'salt' apparently originates from the name of the ancient town Es-Salt, once the capital of the east bank of the Jordan, and probably older than Jericho itself, close to one the worlds best known salt sources - the Dead Sea.

Masada , the Jewish fortess stronghold
Masada the Jewish fortress stronghold overlooking the Dead Sea which controlled the salt supply route from the salt mountain Mt Sodom [Jebel Usdom] to Jerusalem and the North , was critical to Roman strategy

The major use of salt is as a raw material for the production of chlorine , sodium metal, and sodium hydroxide ; it is also used in large amounts in the Solvay process for making sodium carbonate .
SOLVAY PROCESS [Solvay process] [for Ernest Solvay ], commercial process for the manufacture of sodium carbonate (washing soda). Ammonia and carbon dioxide are passed into a saturated sodium chloride solution to form soluble ammonium hydrogen carbonate, which reacts with the sodium chloride to form soluble ammonium chloride and a precipitate of sodium hydrogen carbonate (sodium bicarbonate) if the temperature is maintained below 15°C. The sodium hydrogen carbonate is filtered off and heated to produce sodium carbonate.
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plsept98.htm
Archaebacteria (ancient bacteria)

Anchaebacteria differ from true bacteria in that they...
* do not have murein in their cell wall.
* have differences in their rRNA base sequence.
* live in conditions similar to when earth was forming.

There are three groups of archaebacteria, all of which are chemotrophic.
Salinity is probably the toughest condition faced by salt marsh halophytes. The salty conditions actually mimic the desert condition of insufficient water supply. Consider osmosis. Since water generally moves toward a more concentrated solution, the water of plant cells tends to be drawn out into the salty substrate. Halophytes have mechanisms for reversing the osmotic effect. They concentrate salt ions in their roots, so that the salt concentration is greater there than in the surrounding soil, and water flows into the roots.

Halophytes also remove excess salt by various strategies. Cordgrass (Spartina) and saltgrass (Distichlis) both have glands through which salt is excreted. Films of salt crystals are visible on their stems and leaves. Pickleweed (Salicornia) rids itself of excess salt by means of joints which allow a part of the plants to be broken off. The plant sends salt to its tips and, in the fall, these compartments dry up and break off.
1. Methanogens - methane producing that live in bogs and swamps.
2. Thermoacidophites - heat and acid loving bacteria found near volcanoes on the ocean floor and in hot springs like those in Yellowstone National Park..
3. Halophiles - salt loving bacteria found in salt lakes and the Dead Sea

[Michaelangelica]

Salt discussion group is a bit disapointing
this is interesting

http://www.salt.org.il/main.htm

Does anyone know how a salt-water pool chlorinator works?