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Old 05-06-2006   #1 (permalink)
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Smile Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

I am very interested in salt.

How can we get it out of water to make drinkable water?
Why is it so hard?. What chemistry is making it difficult?
This is the blue planet. Why can't we drink it?

My swimming pool chlorinator does something to salt. What?
How does that work? Why can't that work to provide drinkable water?

How can we restore salt degraded land? A big, big, big problem in Australia .
(We are having a very bad drought because of Mr and Mrs Nino (El Nino-Southern Oscillation)

What plants are salt tolerant?

Who should be eating it?

What is the best type to use?
Should we always use iodised salt?
Are Yuppie salts worth the money?

When is it necessary?
(i.e., "salts" with children's diarrhoea?)
When is it a problem?
(i.e., High blood pressure?)


A picture of salt:
http://www.rkm.com.au/SALT/SALT-sodium-chloride.html

What in it? ( sea salt OZ style)
http://www.aquamaid.com.au/salt.html
Chemical Profile:
Specification Typical Levels
Purity (%NaCL min dry basis) 99.4% 99.6%
Moisture (% max) 2.5% 1.90%
Insolubles (% max) 0.03% 0.01%
Magnesium (mg/kg max) 500 80
Calcium (mg/kg max) 1000 400
Sulphate (mg/kg max) 2500 1200
Iron (mg/kg max) 2 1
Copper (mg/kg max) 1 <1

and
http://www.cea-life.com/minerals_health/seasalt.htm
Salt From the Sea

Most of the salt that is marketed to the processed food industry, or sold by grocery and health food retailers is sold as sea salt. The fact is that all salt originally came from the sea.

Rock salt in mines is also sea salt that has gathered as deposits on ancient, dried seabeds. Altered and transported through time by unknown geological processes, this type of salt has not seen the sea for millions of years.

The issue is one of terminology. In most instances, sodium chloride (NaCl) is the product commonly referred to as 'salt'. However, sea salt is a far more complex salt than NaCl. To avoid what is quite obviously misleading labelling, common salt should be marketed as 'sodium chloride, extracted from sea salt'.

Of course there are other forms of processed crystal salts extracted from the sea that retain far more of the constituent elements of original sea salt. 'Celtic sea salt' is one of these. Celtic sea salt comes in many forms and is characterised by grain size, colour and dampness. The whiter and drier the salt the more it has been washed and 'purified'.

One of the concerns regarding Celtic and other 'natural' sea salt is the purity of the source sea water. Contamination occurs during the drying process (often outdoors), in addition to the alteration and loss of constituents by 'natural' and process washing of the salt stockpile. Much of the Celtic salt produced comes from Brittany in north-western France. Northern Europe is one of the most densely populated regions on our planet (refer: Pollution of the marine environment, NASA night map).

Consequently the waters off Brittany, which flow directly out of the English Channel, contain high levels of pollution. An alarming report issued recently notes detectable levels of pharmaceuticals passing through the population and into the waterways.


Salt is no good for you????
http://www.hunzacrystalsalt.net/Salt.../salt_iii.html

"Arthritis, Kidney & Gall Stones and Cellulite Caused By Common Salt

Eating common table salt results in the formation of edema, or excess fluid in the body tissue, which is also the cause of cellulite. That's why doctors tell us to avoid salt. For every gram of sodium chloride that the body cannot get rid of, the body uses twenty-three times the amount of cell water to neutralize the salt. If the sodium chloride is still too high, the body recrystalizes the table salt by using available animal proteins, which also cannot be broken down and eliminated. The body uses these proteins to produce uric acid in order to get rid of the excess salt. As the body cannot dispose of uric acid, it binds itself with the sodium chloride to form new crystals that are deposited directly in the bones and joints. This is the cause of different kinds of rheumatisms such as arthritis, gout, and kidney and gall bladder stones. The recrystalizing is the body's band-aid solution for the cells and organs in order to protect the body from irreparable damage of irresponsible food intake. But in the long run, it poisons the system because those substances cannot be disposed of.


Soil salinity
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s914495.htm
Salt Man
Researcher: Owen Craig
Transcript
Related Info
Salinity is the bigest environmental problem facing Australia, and scientists are struggling to find ways to solve it. But maybe they’re just not thinking far enough outside the square. Why not remove the salt from the ground and sell it to yuppies to sprinkle on their dinner? It may sound like a joke but Duncan Thomson is actually doing it. He is also extracting other valuable chemicals from our salty land and selling them, from fertilisers to road-building materials. He says he’s turning salinity from a negative into a positive.
--



From a body builder's page http://www.muscle-fitness.com.au/347.html

You're probably already overdoing the sodium. The typical Westerner gets about 5,000-7,000 mg of sodium per day, although adults may need only 500 mg. No Recommended Dietary Allowance for sodium has been set in the U.S.A., but the Daily Value (used in food labelling) for sodium has been set rather diplomatically at 1,400 mg per day. This isn't a requirement so much as an attempt to keep dietary levels within reason - so we don't devour this week's ration of daily values all in just one day.

The Sodium System: Last-Minute Strategies
While sodium is an essential nutrient, too much of it attracts a layer of water under your skin that looks like a layer of bodyfat. Obviously, that's not good for your six-pack or, for that matter, the lines of your thighs, even if your bodyfat is already low

Strategy 5: Switch to Potassium Chloride
If you like to sprinkle salt on your food and use it in baking, try potassium chloride (KCl) instead of table salt (sodium chloride, NaCl) for a day or two before your big day. Because potassium doesn't get under your skin the way sodium does, it doesn't cause a "bloat" effect or a loss of muscular definition.
In addition, potassium chloride tastes the same as table salt and works just as well in bread or any other type of baking - low-sodium diets don't have to be bland. Replacing table salt with potassium chloride is otherwise a no-brainer in light of the fact that most people get too much sodium and too little potassium, which is very much the reverse of the diet humanity evolved on.
Interestingly, potassium has a muscle-cell volumising effect along the same lines as creatine or glutamine. This may be part of the reason many bodybuilders switch to potassium before bodybuilding contests. To be on the safe side, don't go over 4 grams (4,000 mg) of extra potassium per day. Also, check with your doctor before taking potassium if you're on heart medication; he or she will know how potassium interacts with your prescription.


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Last edited by Michaelangelica; 05-06-2006 at 04:27 PM..
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Old 05-07-2006   #2 (permalink)
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Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

Save the drama for your mama; get down and PUSH. Screw your butt into a chair and look it all up, Google or library. If it isn't worth your effort then it isn't worth my effort.

Understanding is not a data inventory.


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Old 05-08-2006   #3 (permalink)
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Smile Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

Quote:
Originally Posted by UncleAl
Save the drama for your mama; get down and PUSH. Screw your butt into a chair and look it all up, Google or library. If it isn't worth your effort then it isn't worth my effort.

Understanding is not a data inventory.
I am sorry you feel that way.
It was a serious question.

My main concerns are-

Salt in Water
I don't understand the chemistry of salt (I have no understanding or training in chemistry -but try). I can't understand why you can't just add some chemical to water and all the salt molecules just fall out. That's why I was fascinated by my pool chlorinator (new house; first pool-saltwater).
How come this technology is not used to make drinkable chlorinated drinking water?

The growing lack of drinking and irrigation water is I feel the major problem facing mankind today.

My local Council, as of today, looks like banning all use of hoses- allowing buckets and watering cans only. We are in the middle of the worst drought ever. Day after day of sunny wide-blue skys is great but it has not rained here for at least 6 weeks and those clear blue skys are becoming sinister.

I have been mucking about with designs for a low tech. inexpensive solar still. Something easily used and transported and inexpensive to make to produce large and small amounts of drinkable water. I have some design ideas but need to make some proto-types to test.

Saliantion of Soil
This is a major problem in my country.
An area the size of the State of Victoria will soon be useless because of salt rising to the surface of the soil. The soil just turns white, everthing dies.
This is the result of land clearing and the huge underground aquifers under a good part of the country.
As the trees go, the underground water rises and the farmland is ruined.
Recovering the land is impossible.
This is a major tragedy.
I believe the problem is not unique to Australia

Why can't the salt be neutralised by some chemical?

I have read a number of books called "salt" most give historical rambles.
I have exhausted my local library.
I have done some web research on Salt -see above post- but am still puzzled.

I offered the topic because I thought, although a simple thing, salt rules our lives in a number of ways. I feel it is an important an issue as Global Warming or Dimming.
I thought I might provoke some interesting conversation on desalination and on the environmental and medical aspects of salt.

I guess I should have posted on those forums as the chemistry forum seems to think such a lowly topic is beneath them?!
--
Michael


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Old 05-09-2006   #4 (permalink)
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Red face Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
I don't understand the chemistry of salt (I have no understanding or training in chemistry -but try). I can't understand why you can't just add some chemical to water and all the salt molecules just fall out. That's why I was fascinated by my pool chlorinator (new house; first pool-saltwater).
How come this technology is not used to make drinkable chlorinated drinking water?
Well! Michael, perhaps I can help. (I do have a hell lot of training in chemistry), So I must try to put your doubts in place

First of all, there really is no chemistry of salt. Chemists study a class of substances called salts, Sodium chloride is a kind of salt, an ionic compound that is made up of a lattice of sodium and chloride ions.

Because it is ionic, and made up of sodium and chloride ions, it is one of the most soluble salts in water. That means lots and lots of salt can get dissolved in water. Because, it is made up of sodium and chloride ions, and most of the salts of these ions are very soluble in water, it cannot be easily precipitated. That is, it cannot be removed from water by adding another substance. In any case when we add some salt to precipitate another salt, a bit of the other substance is left behind in the water. Unfortunately, most other salts are not as benign to the human body as sodium chloride. Sodium chloride is so benign because it is present in limited quantity in all our body cells.

Salt can indeed be removed from water, by a process called reverse osmosis. There are a certain kind of membranes that can filter off the sodium and chloride ions. But, reverse osmosis is not a low cost solution, that's why it is not very economical.

I have not hyperlinked many technical words, because I believe that intelligent curious people should not be spoon fed all the info. Go to wiki or any other search engine and you will find enough information about them.


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Old 05-09-2006   #5 (permalink)
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Smile Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hallenrm

First of all, there really is no chemistry of salt. Chemists study a class of substances called salts, Sodium chloride is a kind of salt, an ionic compound that is made up of a lattice of sodium and chloride ions.


Salt can indeed be removed from water, by a process called reverse osmosis. There are a certain kind of membranes that can filter off the sodium and chloride ions. But, reverse osmosis is not a low cost solution, that's why it is not very economical.
Boy I must sound dumb.

The question I was asking (among others) is why is it SO hard to get drinking water?
Reverse osmosis is just too expensive an option for most of the planet

I don't understand
why "there really is no chemistry of salt".


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Old 05-09-2006   #6 (permalink)
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Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
Boy I must sound dumb.

The question I was asking (among others) is why is it SO hard to get drinking water?
Reverse osmosis is just too expensive an option for most of the planet

I don't understand
why "there really is no chemistry of salt".
It is hard to get drinking water, because drinking water must not contain dissolved substances beyond a limit, and water is an excellent solvent for most inorganic substances (mainly salts). So, the water that we get from the rain/snowfall, (almost equivalent to distilled water) dissolves a lots of salts on its way to the oceans and below the earth's surface.

So, the best option is to collect rainwater, before it flows down. In fact, in India there is an state sponsored initiative for rainwater harvesting. This is the cheapest option, provided there is enough rain/snow fall.

There is no chemistry of salt, although there is chemistry of sodium chloride, chemistry of Nacl etc. This is so because salt is a generic term, it includes substances as sodium sulfide (that is present in rock salt) potaasium chloride, sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, coppersulphate and so on, there are thousands of substances that can be called a salt.


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Old 05-10-2006   #7 (permalink)
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Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

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?


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Old 05-10-2006   #8 (permalink)
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Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

1) Thermodynamics cannot be cheated
2) Economics demands either balanced checkbooks or theft
3) There is no magic
4) The universe does not exist for your convenience
5) Nature doesn't care
6) When individuals or whole species perseveratively engage in empirically stupid acts, the blind hand of evolution deselects them.

The only survival attribute Homo sapiens possesses is intelligence. Politics, Liberal social advocacy bunko, and religion have allied to put an end to that by circumstance and legislation in the early 21st century. By all indications they are proceeding with outstanding success and speed on a planetary scale. Meanwhle 6 billion meat puppets eat, excrete, and reproduce. The piper will be paid.

You are a prime example. You demand charity based upon magic while gloriously wallowing in your ignorance.

Ignorance is educable.
Stupidity is forever.

Make your choice. "You live and learn or you don't live long."


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Old 05-10-2006   #9 (permalink)
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Angry Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

Quote:
Originally Posted by UncleAl
1)
You are a prime example. You demand charity based upon magic while gloriously wallowing in your ignorance.
Who is "You"
This is arrogant, silly nonsense.
You wallow in your ego's self-appointed superiority.
What the hell is "charity based on magic"?


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Old 05-10-2006   #10 (permalink)
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Re: Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

to get drinking water from salt-contaminated water, you boil the water off and then condence the steam into pure water. You can boil by addition of heat or reductionin pressure. Salts in general boil at a much higher temperature, or lower pressure, than water.


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