A State of the Art Paper on Improving Salt Extraction from Lake Katwe Raw Materials in Uganda
A State of the Art Paper on Improving Salt Extraction from Lake Katwe Raw Materials In Uganda Kasedde H.1,2 , Kirabira J.B.2, Bäbler M.U. 3, Tilliander A.1, Jonsson S.1 1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology KTH, Brinellvägen 23, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. 2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology, Makerere University, P.O Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda. 3. Department of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Royal Institute of Technology KTH, Teknikringen 42, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. Abstract The characteristics of Katwe salt lake are briefly discussed. The lake is the largest of the eight saline lakes in the Katwe-Kikorongo volcanic field and is a major source of salt production in Uganda. Today, salt production at the lake is carried out using traditional and artisanal mining methods. Attempts to mechanize the production of domestic and commercial grade salt at the lake were unsuccessful due to the use of a wrong technology. In this paper, the most common available technologies for salt extraction from brine are described. These are divided into four broad categories, namely thermal, membrane, chemical and hybrid processes. A review of the state of the art, previous research and developments in these technologies is presented. A detailed analysis of the processes used was done based on studies reported in the literature. From the analysis, it was observed that thermal salt production processes, especially distillation and solar evaporation have the highest share in installed capacities worldwide. Membrane technologies such as Electro-dialysis, Reverse Osmosis and chemical technologies have not found wide application in the commercial salt industry.
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