Soda Ash

Soda ash is an inorganic compound comprised mostly of sodium carbonate. It is used in the production of lye to make soap, as well as in making baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).

Trona, a mineral composed primarily of sodium carbonate

Materials needed

• A salt-tolerant plant as glassworts, saltworts, or kelp
• Fire

Crafting instructions

Soda ash can be obtained by burning any 'halophyte' (salt tolerant) plant, leaching the ashes, and boiling off the resulting liquid.

The reason soda ash can be extracted from halophyte ashes in this manner is due to sodium carbonate being soluble in water where most other products of halophyte ashes are not.

Uses

Soda ash is useful in several chemical and daily uses. It's an effective flux for glassmaking, can be used to tenderize meat in cooking, and simply used to produce chemicals such as sodium bicarbonate.

References

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Trona, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).