Rock salt where to find

Rock Salt: A piece of rock salt composed of many individual salt crystals. The gray color in parts of the specimen is caused by mineral or hydrocarbon impurities. The specimen is estimated to be about three inches across.

Rock salt is the name of a sedimentary rock that consists almost entirely of halite , a mineral composed of sodium chloride, NaCl. It forms where large volumes of sea water or salty lake water evaporate from an arid-climate basin -- where there is a replenishing flow of salt water and a restricted input of other water. Deposits of rock salt occur as laterally extensive rock units in many parts of the world.

These water-soluble rocks are rarely found at Earth's surface, except in arid countries. The most geographically extensive salt layers in the United States underlie thousands of square miles and reach thicknesses of over feet. People have mined rock salt or produced salt by evaporation for thousands of years.

Most of the ancient salt production was used in cooking and food preservation. Today in the United States, highway deicing is the most important use of rock salt. Rock salt is also used in chemical manufacturing, food processing, agriculture, plastics, paint, textiles, leather processing, water treatment, and many other industries. Salt Deposits: This map shows the location of bedded salt deposits in the United States.

The large continuous deposit along the Gulf Coast contains three basins where salt domes have developed. Map by Geology. Deposits of rock salt thick enough for underground mining or solution mining form under a rare set of geological conditions.

The deposits shown on the accompanying map formed during times of high sea level, when shallow seas spread over extensive areas of continental crust. To deposit a thick layer of salt, long periods of sea water evaporation had to occur in an arid climate, in basins where there was a continuous or repeated influx of new ocean water. Over feet of ocean water must be evaporated to produce a single foot of salt.

So, to produce a salt layer that is 50 feet thick, over one mile of sea water would have been evaporated.

The water was not a mile deep. Instead, there was a continuous - or a repeated - inflow of salt water from the ocean into the salt-forming basin - which was in an arid area and subsiding at a rate that allowed the accumulation of a thick salt.

Red, pink, or brown color in salt can be caused by iron oxide stains or trace elements. Blue color sometimes results from defects in the salt's crystal structure known as color centers. Pure rock salt under bright illumination will range in color between colorless and white.

Colorless salt is usually the most pure because the most common cause of color is impurities. White salt often contains minute gas-filled or fluid-filled cavities.

Specimens or zones of other colors can be caused by mineral grains included in the salt, trace elements in the salt, or small defects in the salt's crystal structure - such as a missing electron. The remains of microscopic organisms in the salt can also produce color. Most specimens of raw rock salt contain minute to clearly visible inclusions. These can be clastic sediment particles, such as clay minerals; crystals of secondary minerals, such as sylvite; or, patches of solid or liquid hydrocarbons.

Crystals or massive inclusions of other evaporite minerals, such as gypsum , anhydrite , or sylvite are common. Reflection of light by any included material can impart an apparent color to the salt. Absorption of light by included materials can produce an apparent gray or black color. Trace elements or defects in the salt's crystal structure, known as color centers, sometimes produce color in the salt.

Specialty Salts: A chef might want to use specialty salts because of their different colors, textures, and tastes. The salt sampler shown contains rose salt from Bolivia, reddish brown Alpine salt from Austria, pink Himalayan salt from Pakistan, Persian blue salt from Iran, clear halite from Pakistan, and black kala namak salt from India. If you visit a store where cooking supplies and spices are sold, you might see salt in a wide variety of colors and textures being sold.

Many of these "specialty salts" are natural materials. Others have been crystallized by people or processed to make a distinctive product. Salt is sometimes crystallized to produce flake-shaped grains which have a unique texture or intensity of flavor.

Some are ground coarsely to produce a burst of saltiness as they are crushed between your teeth. Some are ground finely so that they dissolve quickly, season uniformly, or coat the parts of a food particle that is most likely to touch your tongue. There is more to salt than one might imagine.

Some salts are enhanced with spices, flavoring, or color to produce a special dining experience. If you are purchasing a packaged product, check the description and ingredients to learn fascinating facts about the salt. Some black cooking and table salts contain small amounts of activated charcoal which produce a flavor that many people enjoy.

Pink salts are the most popular. Their color is often natural and caused by trace amounts of iron or another element included in the salt.

Some have been artificially colored by people. Salt Production Methods: The pie diagram above shows the approximate amount of rock salt and rock salt equivalent produced in the United States during the calendar year Data from the United States Geological Survey. In about 39 million tons of salt were produced in the United States. There are four important categories of rock salt production:. The United States consumes more salt than it produces. To satisfy demand in , about 16 million tons of salt were imported.

The amount of imported salt has been increasing in the past few decades. This is mostly a result of increasing demand in the United States and lower production costs in other countries. Salt Core: Photograph of a short segment of a salt core, obtained by drilling a well down to a subsurface salt layer and retrieving a cylinder of the salt. A core of the entire salt layer is often obtained and brought to the surface for examination by a geologist, and for chemical and physical testing. The properties of numerous salt cores will be used to determine which portion of the rock layer will be mined.

Companies interested in developing a salt resource located hundreds to thousands of feet below the surface usually drill numerous wells down to and through the salt layer. They drill to learn the thickness of the salt and what types of rocks enclose it.

They also obtain core samples of the salt see accompanying photo that will be used to determine its chemical and mineral composition. The purity of the salt determines how it can be used.

The depth determines the cost to build the mine. Depth also determines the electricity costs of operation, ventilation, and lifting salt, equipment, people, and water in and out of the mine.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Purification process For this reason, rock salt must undergo a purification process, or be separated from less pure forms before it may be consumed. Sources for rock salt Rock salt does not always form from ancient lakes.

Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn. Go to our next article Check our previous article. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Enquire now - Contact us Give us a call or fill in the form below and we will contact you. Rock salt is the common name for halite.

It is a rock, rather than a mineral, and this is what makes it different to the salt you may find on your dinner table, although they do share many characteristics. Rock salt can be found all over the world. There are deposits ringing dry lake beds, inland marginal seas, and enclosed bays and estuaries in arid regions of the world. At various times in the geologic past, very large bodies of water such as the Mediterranean Sea and a huge body of water that sat where the Atlantic Ocean sits now also evaporated and made enormous deposits of rock salt.

These are now mostly buried by additional sediments. Rock salt in Britain was laid down around million years ago, when Britain was a shallow inland sea surrounded by desert, near the Equator.

Salt is a vital part of human life. Although over-consumption has led to well-advertised dangers, we need salt — or sodium — to live. Salt is one of the oldest food flavourings and has been mined for thousands of years; the oldest known saltworks is in Xiechi Lake in China and dates back to BC. Until relatively recent innovations in methods such as canning and freezing, salt was also one of the major food preservatives.

Salt was originally panned from sea water or lakes, but rock salt is traditionally mined. Rock salt was first discovered in Winsford in Cheshire in , which is the mine used by Online Rock Salt. Local prospectors were originally searching for coal — which, ironically, would be used to heat the brine-filled pans that made salt.