Natural Soda, which produces sodium bicarbonate from deposits 2,000 feet under Rio Blanco County, Colorado, planned to double its plant’s capacity as overseas demand grew for its USA-made product, The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction reported on Dec. 13, 2015.
Growth
- Natural Soda began exporting outside North America in 2013 and had shipped to about 20 countries, marking each bag with a U.S. flag.
- Owner Enirgi Group Corp. of Toronto planned to break ground in 2016 on an expansion to 500,000 tons a year, likely finished in late 2017. That would make it the world’s largest single-facility producer of sodium bicarbonate.
- An earlier $30 million expansion had doubled output to 250,000 tons a year about two years before.
- About 75 people worked at the plant and its Rifle distribution site, and the project was expected to support 60 or more construction jobs.
“There is still a value associated with a made-in-the-USA product,” said company president Sara Schaeffner.
How it is made
The company uses solution mining. It injects hot water through wells into a 25-foot-thick layer of sodium bicarbonate, pumps the solution back up, and recovers crystals through cooling tanks, centrifuges and dryers. The leftover brine is reheated and reinjected so the water is reused.
Source & credit
Source: The Daily Sentinel: “Area sodium bicarbonate project helps meet global demand for product ‘made in the USA’”, Dec. 13, 2015.