Treatment of mixtures containing sodium hydroxide, sodium carbonate, and sodium chloride

Thread Content

This post was last edited by chenshsi on 2009-12-24 at 08:45. Previously, there were posts discussing how to handle this mixture. Through experiments, it was found that carbonation using carbon dioxide yields good results; it produces solid sodium bicarbonate and a saturated sodium chloride solution with a low concentration of sodium bicarbonate. However, since our factory has no readily available and inexpensive source of carbon dioxide, and the investment in a carbonation tower is also quite substantial. Although this method is very good, it’s difficult to implement. 　　What I would like to ask all the soda ash experts here is whether ammonium bicarbonate can be used to achieve the same effect. I do not want to obtain ammonium chloride. The specific procedure is to add ammonium bicarbonate in a 1:1 ratio relative to the amounts of sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate used; this produces sodium bicarbonate and ammonia gas. The ammonia gas is then absorbed in an absorption tower, while a small amount of alkali can be added to the liquid containing ammonia for stripping purposes. Ultimately, a sodium chloride solution with low sodium bicarbonate content is obtained. 　　Everyone, take a look: is this method feasible?