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We use salt in everyday life every day.
In this video, we will show the most interesting salt mining sites.
The extraction of this mineral is as important as the extraction of coal, gas and oil.
The history of salt mining goes back centuries, records from China, Ancient Egypt and Ancient
Rome.
Once upon a time, colorless crystals were used instead of money.
Today, salt is a completely common product.
The richest salt reserves of the planet are being developed by more than 100 countries.
One such country is Mexico.
Here, 770 km from the capital of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, the city of
La Paz, is the city of Guerreero Negro, which in Spanish means “black warrior”.
It has 15 thousand inhabitants.
Near this city, Guerrero Negro established a saltworks in 1957 to meet the demand for
salt in the western United States.
Salt mining has been created around the coastal lagoon of Ojo de Libre, exploiting its strong
salinity.
Today this company is called "Exportada del Sal" and it is engaged in the extraction of
salt, by solar evaporation of sea water.
Over the years of its existence, it has become the largest producer of sea salt in the world,
producing seven million tons of salt per year, exported to the main consumption centers in
the Pacific.
The company developed shallow tidal flats around the Ojo de Libre lagoon, creating several
artificial evaporation ponds that eventually covered an area of about 780 square kilometers.
The salt exported by the company is mainly used in the chemical industry for the production
of caustic soda, chlorine and sodium carbonate.
The work begins with the pumping of seawater from the lagoon into 13 collection ponds for
initial evaporation.
Sea water flows through a series of concentration ponds, in which the salinity gradually increases.
When this brine is saturated with sodium chloride, it is pumped to the crystallization ponds
where the sodium chloride crystallizes as a pure solid deposit.
Here the salt crystallizes over an area of 3,000 hectares.
The crystallization process takes 8 to 10 months.
It takes about 50 million tons of sea water to produce one million tons of salt.
Salt is harvested using salt harvesters and graders.
The collected salt is purified from calcium and magnesium sulfate contamination.
The salt is sent to water tanks for pressure washing.
Deep cleaning allows you to use this salt for home use.
The resulting mineral salt is transported in large dump trucks to the port of Chaparrito
near Guerrero Negro for further cleaning and loading onto barges.
These barges can carry up to 10,300 tons of salt to Morro Redondo, where it is checked,
stored and finally exported on ocean-going ships.
This salt mainly comes to Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea.
Which is about 80% of exports.
In addition, salt is supplied to the western and eastern coasts of the United States and
Canada - this is 20% of exports.
In total, the company receives more than 7 million tons of salt per year.
Salt collection equipment is important.
If earlier trailers had a carrying capacity of 120 tons, then thanks to the efforts of
engineers, it was possible to increase the carrying capacity to 200 tons.
This saves 9% on fuel and 13% on tires and bearings.
Wheel tractor-scrapers are indispensable equipment for salt mining.
Each tractor-scraper consists of a bowl made from a vertically movable hopper, which has
a sharp horizontal leading edge.
The serrated cutting edge makes it easy to remove the layer of salt.
When the operator lowers the sharp edge, the front edge of the scraper tractor cuts into
the salt layer and fills the machine's hopper.
This scraper is ideal for short hauls of salt up to one kilometer.
The Guerrero Negro salt deposit is located in a place of extraordinary beauty, on the
territory of a biosphere reserve.
It played a key role in the development of the region.
Its economic success has contributed to the preservation of the environment, where whales
congregate every winter and stop many species of resident and migratory birds.
Bird flights originate mainly from the USA and Europe.
Another major producer of sea salt is Australia.
Here salt is obtained in the most unusual place - a remote stretch of the coast at the
very northwestern tip of Australia.
Here, the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean quench the parched land.
The Australian-British concern Rio Tinto has its Dampier Salt company here, which is one
of the world's largest producers of sea salt.
This salt is considered the purest in the world.
The company, working together with the natives, has created the ideal sustainable sea salt
industry that works in harmony with the environment.
Sea water is pumped into 8 different ponds, where its salinity increases at each stage
of the system from 17% to 90%.
These steps use the natural way to remove contaminants and bacteria.
Therefore, fish are placed in ponds, approximately 20 to 30 different species.
Wetlands provide an ideal habitat for birds, reptiles, mammals and one species of turtle.
Dampier Salt operates along the Pilbara coast, on lands traditionally owned by the aborigines,
Rio Tinto's joint venture with two Japanese conglomerates produces 3.2 million tons of
raw materials per year by pumping seawater into a 9,000-hectare complex.
The main production is carried out in Shark Bay in the northwestern part of the Australian
state of Western Australia, located about 650 km north of the city of Perth.
This place is practically uninhabited.
Less than 1,000 people live on the bay's 1,500-kilometer-long coastline.
The bay is shallow and therefore it has an unusually high water evaporation.
The water in it is 50% saltier than that brought by the tide from the open ocean.
The tides bring ocean water, which spills over the land, forming vast lakes of crystal
clear water.
In this way, a brine is obtained to form the first stage of salt production.
The composition of the brine is constantly monitored and any imbalances in it are quickly
eliminated so that nature can calmly do its job.
In a few months, the entire area will be covered with large crystals of high purity salt.
The total area of salt mining is twenty-two thousand square kilometers, which is ten times
the area of Tokyo.
These places are a strictly protected reserve.
There are many marine animals in the coastal waters.
This unique place is a candidate for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
During the year, a hard salt crust up to 30 centimeters thick forms in the lakes.
Few crops can survive in such water, but for salt, these are ideal conditions.
Before being put on the market, the salt is thoroughly washed.
Still wet salt is poured onto the top of a huge salt hill.
Thus, it is slowly dried in the hot sun.
From here, the salt is sent to Port Hedland, where the final stages of salt processing
take place.
It is stored before being shipped to its final destinations.
The company is constantly improving, maintaining its reputation as a supplier of salt of the
highest quality.
In the port, ready-made salt is loaded around the clock, 365 days a year, onto ships and
sent around the world.
In Russia, the largest salt deposit is Lake Baskunchak.
Baskunchak is the saltiest body of water on the planet.
This huge drainless lake has been serving people as a source of the necessary mineral
for thousands of years.
Baskunchak salt is mined continuously.
In recent centuries - on an industrial scale.
But the supply of salt does not disappear.
You can get it over and over again.
The lake is over 100 square kilometers of salt water.
It is 10 kilometers wide and about 20 long.
The depth of the lake is from 10 to 30 centimeters.
The saturation of the mineral here is such that the lake is the champion in the concentration
of salt on the planet.
This figure here is 300 grams per liter, which is 50 more than the famous Dead Sea.
Neither fish, nor algae, nor other creatures survive in the water.
This brine is called brine.
Nizhny Baskunchak is located 350 kilometers from Astrakhan.
From here you can get to the coast of the lake either on foot or by car.
Since 2008, Russol has been mining salt here.
The extraction of the precipitated salt is carried out by harvesters picking up salt
leaving trenches that are filled with new brine.
Salt is transported by rail.
Today, the Astrakhan Salt Cellar of the Country produces up to 30 percent of Russian salt.
The salt mining enterprise employs 350 people.
The company "Russol" constantly invests heavily in the modernization of production.
Salt is mined here in the open in the summer season.
The area for salt extraction is determined by the mining development plan.
Salt is mined here annually in two ways.
The first is a classic one with the help of a salt harvester and further loading of raw
materials into wagons and tractors for delivery for processing.
The second is with the new, state-of-the-art pick-up introduced in 2021, which makes the
salt extraction process more gentle and environmentally friendly.
Salt harvester with the name "Baskunchak 1" weighing 180 tons moves on rails.
Railway rails for salt extraction are laid right in the middle of the lake in salt brine.
It is very impressive for tourists and photographers from all over the world.
But they will gradually leave the everyday life of an industrial enterprise.
It is hard to imagine, but the surface of the lake
is just the top of a huge salt mountain, which goes somewhere deep into the earth for about
six kilometers.
Miners cut off only its topmost layer.
At the base of the combine there is a powerful soil pump.
Through the pipeline, he pumps the destroyed salt layer along with the brine.
The brine enters the dehydration system through the check valve.
Countless ladles of salt rise up.
The crusher crushes layers of old salt into gray salt granules of 5-7 millimeters.
They will be used for technical needs, that is, for use by chemists, builders, road builders
and power engineers.
Only two people are involved in moving salt from the lake into giant yellow road trains,
each of which can hold almost five hundred tons of salt - a combine driver and his assistant.
The assistant directly controls the loading chute, he instructs the driver of the tractor
to move as it is loaded.
Already in 2-3 days at the place of operation of the harvester there will be an 8-meter-deep
pool, the boundaries of which will be marked with huge wooden piles.
They can be found throughout the lake at the site of previously developed sites.
While the harvester gnaws out salt in one area, the railway workers prepare the neighboring
area by moving the rails and sleepers a few meters away from the water.
Instead of the chosen salt, underground sources at a rate of approximately 3,000 tons per
day will wash up new layers of the purest, almost 100 percent sodium chlorine from the
depths.
Mining dump trucks that carry salt are so large that you need to climb stairs to the
driver's cab platform.
When a car with a 1000 horsepower engine starts moving, it seems that you are standing on
the deck of a ship.
There are 450 tons of salt in the back, which is almost 7 railway cars, but the driver calmly
drives the dump truck, like a passenger car.
It took him a year of such work to find this calmness.
The driver for an 8-hour shift usually makes three or four trips.
During each such trip, you need to be extremely careful.
If the truck suddenly goes off the road and gets stuck in
the boggy mud of the lake, then it will be possible to pull it out only by disassembling
it for parts.
A huge salt collector is installed a few kilometers from the combine, into which, as if into a
huge sieve, all the salt brought from the lake is poured.
From the hopper, the still wet salt is conveyed to a huge stacker reclaimer.
The stacker pours a mountain of salt to dry in the sun.
Only after that it will be suitable for packaging and subsequent shipment to the consumer.
The salt cone gradually grows and after a while it turns into a long neat salt hill.
Depending on the wishes of the customer, salt can either be simply poured into railway cars,
or packed in bags, which will be neatly packed according to a special scheme.
Salt trains are sent from here every day throughout the country and abroad.
The scale of production is impressive, but from the outside the lake seems almost untouched,
as if all these mechanisms, machines and machine tools are not here that process thousands
of tons of salt day and night.
This
is a salt processing plant.
It manufactures products in assortment and sends them to various regions.
Not far from the village of Nizhniy Baskunchak, in the city
of Akhtubinsk, there is also a port, from where technical salt is loaded onto barges
and sent for the needs of industry, mainly chemical.
It is also supplied to combat winter icing, by sprinkling roads.
That's all.
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