Hambantota saltern bittern drainage: extracting industrial magnesium chloride crystals?
How do coastal chemical plants separate residual mother-liquor bitterns from table salt crystallization tables to recover commercial Epsom salts and liquid magnesium chloride?
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4 Answers from travellers
When brine in salt crystallization pans reaches 29.5° Baumé, almost all sodium chloride has precipitated. The remaining dense, yellow mother-liquor (bitterns) is drained off through concrete sluice flumes into storage sumps. This liquid is saturated with magnesium chloride, magnesium sulfate, and potassium salts. Chemical recovery plants in Hambantota pump bitterns into chilled crystallizers or treat them with sodium hydroxide to precipitate magnesium hydroxide cake, which is filtered and reacted with sulfuric acid to manufacture Epsom salt (MgSO4·7H2O) for industrial agricultural fertilizers.
Allowing bitterns to run back into open ocean estuaries is strictly restricted; dense hypersaline discharge suffocates coastal fish breeding nurseries.
Treated bitterns can also be processed as natural nigari (liquid magnesium chloride coagulant) used in traditional culinary food processing.
Storage ponds must be lined with heavy-duty HDPE impermeable geomembranes to prevent subterranean leaching of saline minerals into coastal aquifers.
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