5 ms·
i never understood why salt was (is?) so valuable yet is available in seemingly endless quantities in the ocean
by foolfoolz 5y ago
i never understood why salt was (is?) so valuable yet is available in seemingly endless quantities in the ocean
- sandworm101 5y agoRemoving it from the ocean is far from easy. It requires large amounts of fuel, time and space.
- gruez 5y agosame reason why we have water shortages yet it's available in seemingly endless quantities in the ocean.
- jimmyed 5y agoNot exactly a fair analogy, since we need a very large amount of water per head compared to salt (unless you are a freman).
- gruez 5y agoThat explains why there are water shortages in nevada, but even in places that are close to the ocean (ie. logistics is a non-issue) there are water shortages. eg. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56798308 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56798308
- b3kart 5y agoMy guess: extracting it from the ocean water requires evaporation, which in turn requires a lot of energy/fuel?
- k__ 5y agoDoesn't it evaporate on its own over time?
- Filligree 5y agoThat requires vast quantities of space and a hot/dry climate to be done efficiently. It certainly was done. Looking back at history, the places that could efficiently do so were major salt exporters; which rendered it uneconomical to do elsewhere.
- wikidani 5y agoYes, but I think that maybe in colder regions it's probably not cost effective. Specially in winter. So that would kind of explain why the polish salt mine mentioned earlier was important
- debacle 5y agoDigging the pan, hardening it (so it's relatively impermeable to sea water), and then repeatedly evaporating the water until you have a brine rich enough in salt to precipitate, and then massing that salt slush so it can completely dry, and then smashing it into a usable form. You can look at salt pans on Google Maps. Here is one I have been to: https://goo.gl/maps/uN968Stn6kPHnH6E7 https://goo.gl/maps/uN968Stn6kPHnH6E7 Obviously today this is done with gigantic machines, and the cost/kg is incredibly low to the point that locals do not pay for salt, but back before the advent of Caterpillar, I imagine harvesting salt this way was very labor intensive. There is a documentary on Amazon called My Name is Salt about the salt harvest in India. It is quite good.
- einpoklum 5y agoWell, if you go back long enough when you could use a larger area for a given output of salt, then - once you prepared your pan once, you could just let the water evaporate completely, and then scratch the salt of the surface. If your pan can be made of rocks than that should probably be even easier. Other than needing some decent sunlight and not super-high humidity - what am I getting wrong?
- debacle 5y agoThe massive amount of human labor involved?
- orangepurple 5y agoUK has insufficient solar radiation and heat accumulation to properly dry saltwater
- mytailorisrich 5y agoIn general you need good climate and geography to produce large quantity of salt in salt marshes. Then, once you have done that, transporting it from coastal areas was also a big undertaking.
- debacle 5y agoIt's heavy, hard to recycle, and time and labor intensive to create.
- watwut 5y agoBecause inland areas exists and are large. Transportation was expensive and slow.