Brine Brine is used for food processing and cooking (pickling and brining), for de-icing of roads and other structures, and in a number of technological processes. It is also a by-product of many industrial processes, such as desalination, and may pose an environmental risk due to its corrosive and toxic effects, so it requires wastewater treatment for proper disposal. Saline water with relatively high concentration of salt (usually sodium chloride) occurs naturally on Earth's surface (salt lakes), crust, and within brine pools on ocean bottom. Numerous processes exist which can produce brines in nature. Modification of seawater via evaporation results in
Brine mining plants, in Texas and Norway, provided more than half the world's primary magnesium through the 1950s and 1960s. As of 2014, the only producer of primary magnesium metal in the United States was U.S. Magnesium LLC, which extracted the metal from surface brine of the Great Salt Lake, at its plant in Rowley, Utah. The Dead Sea Works in Israel produces magnesium as a byproduct of potash extraction. Starting in 2002, CalEnergy extracted zinc from brines at its geothermal energy plants at the Salton Sea, California. At full production, the company hoped to produce 30,000 metric tons of 99.99% pure