How is salt produced?

Sun-drying salt is a labor industry that depends on the weather for food. In the heyday of the 1960s, there were more than 2,400 salt workers and field workers in the salt field, which was almost the main working population of the salt field. Salt is an important product of cloth bag, and salt field accounts for more than half of its total area. The endless salt dome is like a white pyramid silently listed in the middle of the salt field, and all of them have built a "salt railway", which shows that this "salt town" has a long history.

Three-stage salt drying

Yantian is divided into three parts: water area (large evaporation pool), Ping Zi (small evaporation pool) and Chenggezhai (crystallization pool). The moisture content is five sections and ten grids, Pingzhai is divided into three sections and six grids, and Chenggezhai is divided into three sections and twenty-four grids.

Seawater whitening salt

Salt-making workers introduce seawater with a concentration of about 3 degrees (Baume concentration) into the water area, increase the concentration by evaporation, and then advance it step by step. After the fifth stage, it is about 10 degree, and it is pumped to Ping Zi (Ping Zi is higher than the water area) by water truck (that is, dragon bone truck, later changed to windmill, and now it is a water pump) to continue evaporation.

When the concentration of water in Ping Zi increased to 25 degrees, it was introduced into the process to crystallize into salt. The time from the introduction of seawater to the crystallization of salt is not exactly the same, depending on the weather. The weather is good and fast, and the weather is bad and slow. If it rains suddenly, all previous efforts may be in vain. Therefore, it is difficult to have a good harvest when the weather is unstable. It is no exaggeration to say that salt workers live by the weather, and it is not difficult to imagine the difference in their lives.