The Importance of Salts
Have you wondered about the importance of salts? It may sounds strange, but salt has always been an important factor to daily life in ways we do not even know of. That is what this essay is about; the different kinds of salts and their use.
The most known salt is sodium chloride- NaCl- which was a very important factor in the history of our ancestors. It always has been and still is a very useful dietary supplement for humans and animals. As far back as 6050 BC, Egyptians used table salt as a preservative for foods and even mummies. Salt helped eliminate the dependence on the seasonal availability of food, therefore allowed travel over long distances. Not only that but salt was so valuable to civilians at one point that they even used salt as a currency for trade.
Another important salt is potassium chloride, KCl as seen on the periodic table. Potassium chloride is used for making fertilizer to help the growth of many plants which ends the limits to their potassium intake. As a chemical feed stock, it is then used for manufacturing potassium hydroxide and potassium metal. Also, it is used in medicine, this includes lethal injections, scientific applications, food processing, and as a sodium-free substitute for table salt (as I mentioned in the previous paragraph). This salt was once used as a fire extinguishing agent that became useful when trying to be safe.
The third salt I will be talking about is lithium chloride, also known as LiCl. This salt is used mainly for the production of lithium metal by electrolysis of LiCl/KCl melting at 450C- which has many uses. Lithium chloride is also used as a brazing flux for aluminum in car parts, which is very interesting to me. It amuses me how you can make parts for cars out of this salt (after being tampered with of course) but it is still interesting. Another application of LiCl is its use as a descciant, or dry sustainer, for drying air steams. Not only that, but this very valuable salt is also used in organic synthesis as an additive in the Stille reaction. Another use I found to be very interesting was the fact that it can be used to precipitate RNA from cellular extracts.
As you can see, salt has been very influential and even necessary in the daily lives of our ancestors and our daily lives. It is often a time taken for granted because it seems less important since it is so abundant and often seen. However, there are many uses we can add to it if we learn to play with it a little.