Sodium chloride, halite, sodium chloride - all these are the names of the same substance - common salt for everyone. Its scope is extensive: from medicine to the chemical and food industries.
Cooking salt
Real table salt, unlike artificial iodized, contains a large number of useful trace elements and does not have an expiration date. It is it that needs to be used for cooking homemade preparations.
Perhaps the most unusual way to use salt in cooking is to use it as a dish. Layers of Himalayan salt replace kitchen boards, plates and even pans in the kitchens. Now many restaurants are installing salt plates instead of traditional cooking surfaces.
Sodium Chloride in Medicine
Salt itself is a good folk remedy both for the prevention of colds, and for the treatment of an already neglected disease.
A solution of sodium chloride (saline) is widely known in medical practice. It is used to dissolve various drugs. As a standalone tool, sodium chloride is used to combat dehydration. It also serves to treat skin lesions.
Halotherapy is very popular - visiting salt caves. This is a whole area of treatment and prevention of respiratory and skin diseases in children and adults. During the patient’s stay in a specially equipped room, the air is filled with haloaerosols (aerosols of sodium chloride), which are the main active ingredient.
Use of salt in public utilities
In winter, the so-called technical sodium chloride mixed with sand or small gravel is used to combat ice on roads. Thanks to salt, snow melts at subzero temperatures, and sand provides traction on the soles of shoes and wheels of cars with the road.
Despite the fact that salt spoils shoes, especially leather, and causes corrosion of car bodies, it is still not replaced by other reagents due to its low cost. Recently, calcium chloride has been added to the sand-salt mixture - the result is the same, but the resulting composition is less harmful to the environment.
Sodium chloride as a deicing agent is used not only in Russia. All the "charms" of its use are experienced by residents of Ukraine, Belarus, China, and the USA. In Sweden, a mixture of salt and granite chips is used.
Other uses for sodium chloride
Salt is part of special solutions that are used at the final stage of silvering metals (coatings of base metals such as brass or copper with a thin layer of silver). This technique is used to create jewelry, cutlery, and also for the production of electrical connectors.
In refrigeration, an aqueous solution of sodium chloride is one of the most common coolants.
Very popular, especially among those who advocate a healthy lifestyle, are salt lamps whose shades are machined from halite. When turned on, they act as air ionizers. For interior decoration, not only salt lamps or candlesticks are used. Now there is a growing demand for halite bricks and tiles as a building material for wall cladding, including in residential premises.