Salt

Sodium chloride, or simply salt, is a familiar product used in both human and animal food. Feedstock and chemical industry are the largest consumers, the latter for chloride and caustic soda manufacture, the two derivatives that are employed extensively in the chemical industry and for plastics manufacture (PVC). Huge quantities of salt are also required for road de-icing in the northern hemisphere.

The next largest applications are in the agricultural sector, where salt is used as a component in animal feeds and human food to enhance flavour and also for food preservation or processing.

Other uses for salt are in the petroleum industry for drilling fluids, in the softening of hard waters, in the textile industry as a rinse, in the tanning industry to inhibit microbial activities, in the pulp and paper industry to bleach wood pulp, and in the metal processing of aluminium, copper, steel, vanadium and uranium.

Source : European Commission D6 III : European Minerals Yearbook. Second edition 1996-7. Luxembourg 1998