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 salt precipitated in solar evaporation at the Dead Sea plants is tens of millions of tons annually, but very little of the salt is marketed. Today, salt from groundwater brines is generally a byproduct of the process of extracting other dissolved substances from brines and constitutes only a small part of world salt production. In the United States, salt is recovered from surface brine at the Great Salt Lake, Utah, and from a shallow subsurface brine at Searles Lake, California. In 1997 about two-thirds of world sodium sulfate production was recovered from brine. Two plants in the US, at Searles