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Contents [hide]
1 Uses
1.1 Chemicals production
1.1.1 Chlor-alkali industry
1.2 Soda-ash industry
1.3 Standard
1.4 Miscellaneous industrial uses
1.5 Water softening
1.6 Road salt
1.6.1 Environmental effects
1.7 Food industry and agriculture
1.8 Medicine
1.9 Firefighting
1.10 Cleanser
1.11 Optical usage
2 Chemistry
2.1 Solid sodium chloride
2.2 Aqueous solutions
2.3 pH of sodium chloride solutions
2.4 Unexpected stable stoichiometric variants
3 Occurrence
4 Production
5 Biological functions
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Uses[edit]
In addition to the familiar domestic uses of salt, more dominant applications of
the approximately 250 megatons per year production (2008 data) include chemicals
and de-icing.[3]
Chemicals production[edit]
Salt is used, directly or indirectly, in the production of many chemicals, which
consume most of the world's production.[4]
Chlor-alkali industry[edit]
See also: Chloralkali process
It is the starting point for the chloralkali process, which provides the world with
chlorine and sodium hydroxide according to the chemical equation
Soda-ash industry[edit]
Sodium chloride is used in the Solvay process to produce sodium carbonate and
calcium chloride. Sodium carbonate, in turn, is used to produce glass, sodium
bicarbonate, and dyes, as well as a myriad of other chemicals. In the Mannheim
process and in the Hargreaves process, sodium chloride is used for the production
of sodium sulfate and hydrochloric acid.
Standard[edit]
Sodium chloride has an international standard that is created by ASTM
International. The standard is named ASTM E534-13 and is the standard test methods
for chemical analysis of sodium chloride. These methods listed provide procedures
for analyzing sodium chloride to determine whether it is suitable for its intended
use and application.
In rubber manufacture, salt is used to make buna, neoprene and white rubber types.
Salt brine and sulfuric acid are used to coagulate an emulsified latex made from
chlorinated butadiene.[4][3]
Salt also is added to secure the soil and to provide firmness to the foundation on
which highways are built. The salt acts to minimize the effects of shifting caused
in the subsurface by changes in humidity and traffic load.[4]
Sodium chloride is sometimes used as a cheap and safe desiccant because of its
hygroscopic properties, making salting an effective method of food preservation
historically; the salt draws water out of bacteria through osmotic pressure,
keeping it from reproducing, a major source of food spoilage. Even though more
effective desiccants are available, few are safe for humans to ingest.
Water softening[edit]
Hard water contains calcium and magnesium ions that interfere with action of soap
and contribute to the buildup of a scale or film of alkaline mineral deposits in
household and industrial equipment and pipes. Commercial and residential water-
softening units use ion-exchange resins to remove the offending ions that cause the
hardness. These resins are generated and regenerated using sodium chloride.[4][3]
Road salt[edit]
Environmental effects[edit]
Road salt ends up in fresh-water bodies and could harm aquatic plants and animals
by disrupting their osmoregulation ability.[6] The omnipresence of salt poses a
problem in any coastal coating application, as trapped salts cause great problems
in adhesion. Naval authorities and ship builders monitor the salt concentrations on
surfaces during construction. Maximal salt concentrations on surfaces are dependent
on the authority and application. The IMO regulation is mostly used and sets salt
levels to a maximum of 50 mg/m2 soluble salts measured as sodium chloride. These
measurements are done by means of a Bresle test.
In highway de-icing, salt has been associated with corrosion of bridge decks, motor
vehicles, reinforcement bar and wire, and unprotected steel structures used in road
construction. Surface runoff, vehicle spraying, and windblown actions also affect
soil, roadside vegetation, and local surface water and groundwater supplies.
Although evidence of environmental loading of salt has been found during peak
usage, the spring rains and thaws usually dilute the concentrations of sodium in
the area where salt was applied.[4] A 2009 study found that approximately 70% of
the road salt being applied in the Minneapolis-St Paul metro area is retained in
the local watershed.[7]
Medicine[edit]
Nasal spray is commonly found with a saline solution as the active ingredient.
Main article: Saline (medicine)
Sodium chloride is used together with water as one of the primary solutions for
intravenous therapy. Nasal spray usually contains a saline solution.
Firefighting[edit]
Cleanser[edit]
Since at least medieval times, people have used salt as a cleansing agent rubbed on
household surfaces. It is also used in many brands of shampoo, toothpaste and
popularly to de-ice driveways and patches of ice.
Optical usage[edit]
Defect-free NaCl crystals have an optical transmittance of about 90% for infrared
light, specifically between 200 nm and 20 �m. They were therefore used in optical
components (windows and prisms) operating in that spectral range, where few non-
absorbing alternatives exist and where requirements for absence of microscopic
inhomogeneities are less strict than in the visible range. While inexpensive, NaCl
crystals are soft and hygroscopic � when exposed to the ambient air, they gradually
cover with "frost". This limits application of NaCl to dry environments, vacuum
sealed assembly areas or for short-term uses such as prototyping. Nowadays
materials like zinc selenide (ZnSe), which are stronger mechanically and are less
sensitive to moisture, are used instead of NaCl for the infrared spectral range.
Chemistry[edit]
Solid sodium chloride[edit]
See also: Cubic crystal system
In solid sodium chloride, each ion is surrounded by six ions of the opposite charge
as expected on electrostatic grounds. The surrounding ions are located at the
vertices of a regular octahedron. In the language of close-packing, the larger
chloride ions are arranged in a cubic array whereas the smaller sodium ions fill
all the cubic gaps (octahedral voids) between them. This same basic structure is
found in many other compounds and is commonly known as the halite or rock-salt
crystal structure. It can be represented as a face-centered cubic (fcc) lattice
with a two-atom basis or as two interpenetrating face centered cubic lattices. The
first atom is located at each lattice point, and the second atom is located halfway
between lattice points along the fcc unit cell edge.
Solid sodium chloride has a melting point of 801 �C. Thermal conductivity of sodium
chloride as a function of temperature has a maximum of 2.03 W/(cm K) at 8 K (-
265.15 �C; -445.27 �F) and decreases to 0.069 at 314 K (41 �C; 106 �F). It also
decreases with doping.[8]
Aqueous solutions[edit]
Solubility of NaCl in various solvents
(g NaCl / 1 kg of solvent at 25 �C (77 �F))[9]
Water 360
Formamide 94
Glycerin 83
Propylene glycol 71
Formic acid 52
Liquid ammonia 30.2
Methanol 14
Ethanol 0.65
Dimethylformamide 0.4
1-Propanol 0.124
Sulfolane 0.05
1-Butanol 0.05
2-Propanol 0.03
1-Pentanol 0.018
Acetonitrile 0.003
Acetone 0.00042
The attraction between the Na+ and Cl- ions in the solid is so strong that only
highly polar solvents like water dissolve NaCl well.
When dissolved in water, the sodium chloride framework disintegrates as the Na+ and
Cl- ions become surrounded by the polar water molecules. These solutions consist of
metal aquo complex with the formula [Na(H2O)8]+, with the Na�O distance of 250 pm.
The chloride ions are also strongly solvated, each being surrounded by an average
of 6 molecules of water.[10] Solutions of sodium chloride have very different
properties from pure water. The freezing point is -21.12 �C (-6.02 �F) for 23.31 wt
% of salt, and the boiling point of saturated salt solution is near 108.7 �C (227.7
�F).[5] From cold solutions, salt crystallises as the dihydrate NaCl�2H2O.
View of one slab of NaCl(H2O)2 (red = O, white = H, green = Cl, purple = Na).[11]
pH of sodium chloride solutions[edit]
The pH of a sodium chloride solution remains �7 due to the extremely weak basicity
of the Cl- ion, which is the conjugate base of the strong acid HCl. In other words,
NaCl has no effect on system pH.[12]
Occurrence[edit]
Small particles of sea salt are the dominant cloud condensation nuclei far out at
sea, which allow the formation of clouds in otherwise non-polluted air.[14]
Production[edit]
Salt is currently mass-produced by evaporation of seawater or brine from brine
wells and salt lakes. Mining of rock salt is also a major source. China is the
world's main supplier of salt.[4] In 2010, world production was estimated at 270
million tonnes, the top five producers (in million tonnes) being China (60.0),
United States (45.0), Germany (16.5), India (15.8) and Canada (14.0).[15] Salt is
also a byproduct of potassium mining.
Modern rock salt mine near Mount Morris, New York, United States
Jordanian and Israeli salt evaporation ponds at the south end of the Dead Sea.
Biological functions[edit]
See also: Health effects of salt
The long held belief that a high-salt diet raises the risk of cardio-vascular
disease is coming under scrutiny.[16] More recently, dietary salt was demonstrated
to attenuate nitric oxide production. Nitric oxide (NO) contributes to vessel
homeostasis by inhibiting vascular smooth muscle contraction and growth, platelet
aggregation, and leukocyte adhesion to the endothelium.[17]
See also[edit]
Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on
Salt
Biosalinity
Edible salt (table salt)
Halite, the mineral form of sodium chloride
Salinity
Salting the earth
References[edit]
This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Geological
Survey document: "Salt" (PDF).
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