Salt not only for Taste

Salt

Not Only For Taste

Salt has made a glittering, often surprising contribution to the history of humankind. Whoever controlled salt was in power. That was the world history.

Sri Lanka is an island nation surrounded by Indian Ocean that holds unlimited resources and salt is one of its prime commodities, which can be easily exploited as an almost inexhaustible resource. Though Sri Lanka is blessed with a temperate climate throughout the year salt harvesting is limited to two seasons namely Yala & Maha base on monsoonal rain. As such, sea salt can be produced using natural sunlight allowing for the seasonal (monsoonal) changes.

Two areas of the country mainly Hambantota and Puttalam are famous for salt for ages. There are couple of salterns namely Maha lewaya, Bundala, Palatupana and Kunukalliya lewaya existing in southern province to produce nearly 40% of the total salt demand of 160,000 MT of edible salt in addition to the demand from other industries. Rest is supplied from north-western province. Most of other salterns scattered in Puttalam district and are accountable for a substantial percentage of the country’s salt production. There are some salterns found in the Northern region too. Newly developed saltern called Periyakarachchi in Eastern province is now accountable for the countries demand in addition to the salterns established long back. All those salterns exploit sea water or lagoon brine and the natural sunlight to produce salt. As such, the only hindrance is climatic inconsistency as an island.

Theoretically, during salt process both the source material (sea water) and the energy source (sunlight) are absolutely free, a favorable condition hardly found in other industries. Yet, it is surprising to note that most of the people in Sri Lanka still fail to identify the economic importance of this valuable resource Sea Salt. Fortunately, in the recent past some private entrepreneurs too have come to the forefront to invest in to upgrade the salt industry. Couple of years back Raigam Wayamba Salterns PLC declared its commercial production of salt adapting Pure Vacuum Dried (PVD) technology affirming that salt could be produced 100% free from any other impurities using artificial evaporation technology.

The other noteworthy feature is that even during the conventional salt production locals are unaware of many important highly valuable elements that result during salt production. These are not exploiting for any profitable use. One such product called bittern, very bitter-tasting solution that remains after evaporation and crystallization of salt, fetches a very high price compared to common salt. It is also a commercial source of many elements including magnesium compounds especially magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts). In addition, very common and important chemical called gypsum is solidified in intermediate ponds, but Lankans so far do not extract those products, nevertheless, spent lot of money to import those required by industries.

In past there was an establishment called Paranthan Chemical Factory but unfortunately it was destroyed during the civil war. That factory was capable of producing several valuable chemicals mainly Sodium Hydroxide by using salt solution as a primary source material. During that process hydrogen and chlorine are also produced as by-products directing to many industries. Nowadays, scientists have identified that 14,000 salt based industries fall within high-tech category.

Even with all those technological advances, it is surprising to note that Sri Lanka had not yet considered the economic importance of this valuable resource in trending towards Nano-Age.