What technologies are used to produce salt?
The salt industry Every day, each of the earth’s 5.9 billion inhabitants uses salt. Annual salt production has increased over the past century from 10 million tons to over 200 million tons today. Nearly 100 nations have salt producing facilities ranging from primitive solar evaporation to advanced, multi-stage evaporation in salt refineries. The U.S. salt industry began in 1614 when the first non-native solar saltworks was established by the Jamestown colonists on Smith’s Island, VA. The U.S. is the world’s second largest salt producer, producing 46 million tons a year, nearly half of that in the form of brines produced by captive brine wells supplying U.S. chloralkali chemical companies in such states as Michigan, Texas and West Virginia . The remaining is “dry salt” produced using three basic technologies : solar evaporation of seawater or saline lakewater, solution mining and vacuum pan evaporation and conventional deep-shaft (rock salt) mining . Currently, the U.S. salt industry op
