FORTUNE IN SEA SALT.

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 102, 4 May 1925, Page 3

FORTUNE IN SEA SALT.

WEALTH OF THE OCEAN

VAST MINERAL TREASURES.

The ocean appears to the traveller to., be a vast expanse of salty water valued chiefly for transportation and Bource-'of • rainfall.. Yet it is veritably teeming' with plant and animal life, and its depths hold untold treasures, writes D. auu ,sler in the "New York Times." Although apparently a nuisance.and worthless, sea salt is Nature's storehouse of treasures to the chemist, -for it contains all the valuable constituents of fcbo earth s crust that have been.: leached out by the countless rains of former years. ' Although sea wafer is rather dilute, the amount of salt in the "entire ocean 18 rT^n^' for tlle o?ean is immense ~a,bo^ 139.C00.CX10 square miles in area and 302.000.000 cubic miles in volume Its average depth is over two miles, and its greatest known depth is about five miles. A gallon of sea water contains approximately a quarter of a pound of salt, and since the average density of rock salt is 2.24. times that of water. ; the entire ocean, if dried up, would yield j approximately four and a half cubic miles j of gait. I Sea water is mainly a solution of icomjmon salt, Glauber's salt. Epsom salt,' gypsum, and potassium chloride and sulphate. . Approximately, three-fourths- of the saline matter is sodium chloride or common salt, and it is in the preparation of this important substance that sea water finds its principal use. Ever sinco man learned to cook his food salt has ; been an essential constituent of his diet. In ancient times all the salt was prepared from sea water, and sea salt manu- ■ facturo is still an important industry' in nearly all warm, dry countries' bordering the sea. . In addition to the gaits named above, sea water contains appreciable amountsof. promme, iodine, iron, silicon, carbonate, and phosphate. Traces of flourine, nitrogen, arsenic, boron, lithium, rubidium, caesium, strontium, manganese, barium, aluminium, copper, .zinc, silver, lead, cobalt, nickel, gold, and radium have been found . The total amount of any of the elements occurring in the entire ocean is stupendous. lodine exists in sea water only to the extent of about two parts per million,' yet the entire ocean contains some 60,000,000,000 tons of iodine valued at present at £100,000,000,000,000 bcience has never developed a profitable method of extraction of this element from sea water, but Nature has. Many seaweeds extract iodine from the watec in their Jife processes. By burning thp seaweed and extracting the ash iodine i» obtained in the British Isles, Normanbv, Norway, and Japan. Potassium salts and bromine are by-products of the industry. ' Bromine is also obtained in a limited way from the mother liauor left-after' the crystallisation of salt from sea water. This is effected by a process invented by Balard three-quarters of a century ago, and is still in use at Giraud in Southern Irance. Immense quantities of bromine might be vecovered if all of the mother liquors from sea-salt manufacture were worked up. In 1923 sensational rumours were afloat to the effect that Germany had discovered a practical way of separating the gold from sea water, and that she expected to produce enough of the precious metal m this way to pay her reparation debts. Recently it has been learned that. tba Germans were experimenting along this line, and were really able to produce gold in this way, but that the cost of recovery was many times the value of tho gokl produced. Ever since 1872, when, bonstadt demonstrated the presence of gold in sea water, there have been many wildcat schemes for "mining" gold from the sea. Most of these attempts have been stock-selling schemes which have capitalised man's cupidity and gullibility. The amounts of gold reports-to have been found in a ton of sea water vary front a tenth, of a grain to a groin. Approximately three times that ■ amount o£ silver is usually reported a-s being present. If the correctness of the above figures is assumed, the amount of gold in the entire ocean is tremendous. Supposing that the sea averages half a grain o? gold per ton of water, there woulj' bd 4.821,736 ounces of gold in a single cubio mile of water, and if we value this at £4 an ounce it would be worth £19,286,944. However, if anyone ever finds an easy way of producing gold from the sea tlie price of gold will drop to 1 the point where we can use it for ths manufacture of non-corrosive implements for everyday use.