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.
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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
Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.
