Uses of Salts

 Hello, I am glad to be with you again today as we continue to look at the topic, “Salts” in chemistry. Yesterday, we recapped the highlights of our study on complex salts and their different uses. Today we shall look into the broader picture and discuss the uses of salts generally.


The different uses of salts are as follows;

1) Salts are used to lower the melting point of ice: It is common during winter to see ice all over the streets making vehicular traffic on the roads quite difficult. In such cases, it is not uncommon to see ice sprinkled on the road in order to lower the melting point of ice and clear the snow off the road. The property applied here is the ability of impurities (in this case salt particles) to lower the melting point of a pure substance (in this case ice). NaCl and CaCl2 are commonly used for this purpose.

2) Salts are used in the process of salting out: I have earlier discussed the process of saponification. In this process, sodium hydroxide is added to fat/oil and a soap is formed. The soap is crystallized when sodium chloride crystals are added to the soap solution. This process is called salting out. 

3) Salts can be used as a preservative: It is common to see that sodium chloride may be added to food substances to prevent spoilage of food. Sodium chloride can preserve food by absorbing moisture which is necessary for the reactions that lead to food spoilage to occur.

4) Salts are used to remove hardness from water: Water is said to be hard when it contains calcium or magnesium ions. These ions are otherwise called HARDNESS IONS. If we can replace these ions with other ions such as sodium or potassium ions that do not cause hardness of water, then we have successfully eliminated the cause of hardness from a water sample. This is often done by the use of an ion exchange resin which is basically a solid resin coated with sodium or potassium salts that can easily exchange Na^+ or K^+ with the calcium and magnesium ions in the hard water.

5) Salts are used as food additives: Sodium, calcium and magnesium salts are often added to food to improve the nutritional quality of some commercial food products.


We are going to have a webinar on our Facebook page tomorrow on the topic; How to study Chemistry and Understand It at 2pm (WAT). The link to the event is shared below;

https://fb.me/e/65saALruu?mibextid=Gg3lNB





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