5 ms·
Digging 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 sal
by debacle 5y ago
Digging 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?
- Johnythree 5y agoThe fact that that there is only enough sunlight in tropical areas. And that heavy rain (monsoon, etc) will wipe out all your work.
- einpoklum 5y agoPlenty of sunlight in the Mediterranean basin, most of Asia not including Siberia (not sure about Kazakhstan, Mongolia etc), the middle of the USA and due South from there almost all the way to Southern South-America. Heavy rain would indeed wipe out all your work, which is why you would do it in the drier seasons.