12 Facts About Sodium chloride

Sodium chloride is the salt most responsible for the salinity of seawater and of the extracellular fluid of many multicellular organisms.

Large quantities of sodium chloride are used in many industrial processes, and it is a major source of sodium and chlorine compounds used as feedstocks for further chemical syntheses.

Sodium chloride hydroxide is extensively used in many different industries enabling production of paper, soap, and aluminium etc.

Sodium chloride is used in the Solvay process to produce sodium carbonate and calcium chloride.

Sodium chloride has an international standard that is created by ASTM International.

Sodium chloride is heavily used, so even relatively minor applications can consume massive quantities.

Sodium chloride is sometimes used as a cheap and safe desiccant because of its hygroscopic properties, making salting an effective method of food preservation historically; the salt draws water out of bacteria through osmotic pressure, keeping it from reproducing, a major source of food spoilage.

Sodium chloride is used in veterinary medicine as emesis-causing agent.

Sodium chloride is used together with water as one of the primary solutions for intravenous therapy.

Sodium chloride is the principal extinguishing agent in fire extinguishers used on combustible metal fires such as magnesium, potassium, sodium, and NaK alloys .

The Sodium chloride ions are strongly solvated, each being surrounded by an average of six molecules of water.

PH of a sodium chloride solution remains ˜7 due to the extremely weak basicity of the Cl ion, which is the conjugate base of the strong acid HCl.