Other industrial uses of salt

It would be difficult to list all of the thousands of industries that use salt as a raw material or ingredient. The major industries include:

Textile and dyeing. Salt is used to fix dyes and to standardize dye batches

Metal processing, such as aluminum refining. Salt is used to remove impurities

Rubber manufacturing. Salt separates the rubber from latex

Oil and gas drilling. Salt is used to produce a drilling mud that prevents widening of bore holes in rock salt strata, inhibits fermentation, and increases mud density

Pharmaceuticals. Salt is used for tablet and caplet polishing, the production of intraveneous saline solutions and for manufacturing hemodialysis solutions used for kidney machines

Animal hide processing and leather tanning. Salt is used to cure, preserve, and tan hides

Pigment manufacture. Salt is a grinding agent

Ceramics manufacture. Salt acts to vitrify heated clays

Soap making. Salt separates glycerol from water

Detergent production. Salt is used as a filler.

Just a few of salt’s other industrial uses include.

Windows, lenses and prisms and in high power laser systems (sodium chloride)
In molten salt reactors to produce and separate transuranic elements (sodium chloride) - see "further reading" to left
In molten salt incineration of high explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics (sodium chloride)
In salt bath furnaces for a number of heat treatment applications such as: austenitizing, martempering, neutral hardening, tempering nitriding, carburizing, and dip brazing (sodium chloride)
To generate electricity in salinity gradient solar ponds (sodium chloride)
As an antifreeze agent in geothermal heating and cooling (sodium chloride)
To combat greenhouse gases by sequestering industrial carbon/carbon dioxide underground (sodium chloride)
And salt mines host experiments in physics and astrophysics that require precise conditions for accurate measurement (sodium chloride)