Sustainable river-basin salinity management: Treatment of natural brine springs for recovery of purified sodium chloride and other valuable minerals

A treatment process was developed to extract sodium chloride salt, via evaporation, from high-salinity natural brine springs. The source of the brine studied in this project is watershed of the Salt Fork of the Brazos River in Texas. When evaporation is applied to the brine, various impurities precipitate along with the sodium chloride salt (halite). Therefore, a treatment was developed in order to produce a valuable, high-purity salt product. The treatment consists of pretreating the brine with sodium carbonate and hydrochloric acid to for softening and decarbonation. After evaporation, a brine wash post-treatment process was employed to increase the purity of the salt product. A salt purity of 99.3% was achieved, which could be marketed commercially. This purity was achieved by treating the brine with 0.1 molal sodium carbonate and 0.1073 molal of hydrochloric acid with 35% purity