What is salt?

   What is salt? More on chemistry lessons we learned that salt - a chemical compound formed by the interaction of acids and alkalis. But in terms of mineralogy - is the brainchild of secular geological processes matured in the womb of the planet's many kilometers of evaporite deposits.

The salty taste - a unique and important feature, which is characteristic only of pure rock salt. So nature stand out among the other substances, which has essential biological functions, and chief among them - to maintain the salt balance in the tissues and cells. Upon evaporation of seawater in the sun are in it chemicals crystallize in a certain order and are a mixture close to recruit and ratio of the main components to inorganic compounds in human blood. This mineral can be reasonably attributed to the invaluable!

    Intuitively, people felt it. According to stories N. Maclay, Papuans, finding a tree for a long time lain in the sea water, burned it and ate salted ash. The Egyptians were evaporated under the sun salt from sea water in special baths. The Sumerians in the III millennium BC. e. lowered into the water timber Gulf, then dried and scraped off with their salt crystals.

    In Russia, it has long been known to the White Sea salt, so-called "long-tailed duck," it was cooked Russian coast-dwellers, who lived on the coast of the White Sea. Even in the XII century prince Svyatoslav identified tax salt works: "... Mori from chrena and from Salgym of paunch." To understand the Old Russian language, we turn to the V. Dahl. Belly in the White Sea saltworks called bag of salt in 2 quadrangle, ie a volume of about 52 liters. Chren - iron pan itself - the boiler in which the evaporated seawater.

    The greatest flowering of hydrochloric fishing reached in XVI-XVII centuries. At this time in the White Sea boil about 700 thousand pounds of salt. More than 2.5 centuries ago, the complexity of delivery of salt made the Commander of the First Kamchatka expedition of Bering to organize extraction of salt on the Pacific coast of Okhotsk, where it is obtained from sea water freeze. They knew about the underground salt deposits - polyhalite.

The mineral rock salt was formed 250 million years ago in terms of ancient marine lagoons. Its reservoir, the same age of the Permian geological epoch, "squeeze" rocks, forming diapirs - a pillar of salt. When the rock salt on the tectonic fissures reached the Earth's surface, it spreads to form a salt glaciers - glaciers. Sometimes mineral can be formed in the craters of volcanoes.

Depending on the origin distinguish rock salt - from natural deposits, sedimentary - from the bottom of lakes and vacuum - derived from the so-called brine. Sedimentary deposits of rock salt are found in many places: it is mined in the Donbas, the Perm region, the Lower Volga region and in Ukraine - in Transcarpathia. Large deposits of halite have in Germany and Austria.

Rock salt is widely applied in various industries. As the percentage of use of salt in food and industrial purposes can judge the level of development of a country. For example, in the United States received 97% of the salt used is not for culinary purposes. While most people are used to seeing salt as "table decoration" and to eat, there are 14 thousand variants of its use.

• The need for salting meat to preserve it even mentioned in the Bible. Posolochnonitritnaya mixture used in the production of sausages - to stabilize the pink-red color, increase the shelf life and improve the taste of sausage.
• Salt is an important raw material in the pharmaceutical industry. Sterile saline, hypertonic and hypotonic solutions rehydron, tsitroglyukasolan, akvamaris, Physiomer, yelling - the list goes on.
• Sea salt and algae extracts are widely used in cosmetics. The antioxidant selenium, which is part of sea salt, protects the skin from UV rays. The salt scrub is present both in the anti-cellulite, massage creams, creams and gels for weight loss. It is proved that the salt penetrates into the deeper layers of the skin, and "pulls" the pathogenic cells. Phyto and aromasol baths known relaxing and rejuvenating effects. Salt has also received recognition as a supplement to the Balsams, Golik and masks.
• In the chemical industry salt needed to produce gypsum, soda ash, caustic soda. Special salt tablets used in water purification systems.
• Sol - is the production of plastics, paper, soap, and glass. In the leather industry it is used for tanning leather.
• Rock salt for industrial use are widely used in metallurgy, oil and gas industry, such as oil drilling.
• Aft briquetted salt enters the ration of cattle, poultry, fur-bearing animals, as well as prescription ingredient in the production of feed additives and biovitaminnyh. "Carefully study the Earth's interior, and, moving forward, you will find the hidden stone, the true medicine." These words of vilriolum - «secret dissolving salts" - were written by the German monk XV-XVI centuries Basil Valentine. Probably, they have not yet unraveled through.

    "To know a person, you have a peck of salt with him to eat," - says the proverb. And indeed, a lot or a little? Each of us in the year it takes about 5-6 kg of salt. Thus 16 kg would be enough two of nearly 1.5 years. For all mankind the need for salt is about 7 million tons per year! Meals can be balanced and not to use so much salt, but most of us have the habit of eating pickles, wanting to improve the taste of cooked food.

  International requirements for the quality of salt food regulators Code (CodexAlimentarius). The quality of the salt is divided into four classes: Extra, Extra, and second, each variety has different numbers of grinding. The content of sodium chloride in the salt of higher grade should be at least 98.4% and in the "Extra" - not less than 99.7%.