Analysis of Sea Salt Crystal Structure from Crystallization Process

Indonesia is an archipelago that has the second longest coastline in the world, which is reaching 100,000 km. That coastline has a potential to be developed into salt production area which is supported by equatorial regions that have high concentration of radiation intensity. Sea salt is mainly consisted of sodium chloride and widely used in various purposes from household to industry. Beside sodium and calcium, one type of salt that can also be produced in seawater is magnesium. Magnesium can be treated into magnesium carbonate by acidic or alkali leaching and carbonation process. Magnesium carbonate is the raw material for neutralize stomach acid, magnesium nutritional source and paint filler so in getting magnesium from seawater, the purification process is needed. In this study, salt formation will be observed by reducing the volume of seawater from 2 L into 1 L, 500 mL, 250 mL and totally evaporated with distillation process. ICP analysis showed that when the volume reduced into 1 L, magnesium concentration reached 35.14 ppm from its initial concentration was 15.05 ppm. X-ray fluorescence(XRF) analysis showed that in the first step the concentration of magnesium is 9.36 persenwt while reducing the volume of seawaterfrom 2 L into 500 mL, 250 mL and totally evaporated the concentration of magnesium concentration were 20.36 persenwt, 18.06 persenwt, and 22.59 persenwt respectively. On visual observations showed that the salt was obtained by reducing the volume of seawater from 2 L into 1 L, 500 mL and 250 mL were not hygroscopic, but while seawater totally evaporated the sea salt was highly hygroscopic. AIP Conference Proceeding of ICST, 11-12 November 2015.