In addition, soda ash is used in the production of soaps and detergents and provides chemical co-products such as salt, borax, sodium bicarbonate, and sodium sulfite. Beverage bottles account for a lion’s share of the remainder of the glass market. Most of this goes to “flat glass” used for automobiles and in construction as well as mirrors, solar panels, and signs.

Worldwide, glass production amounts to more than half of the total end-use for the chemical.

Most soda ash is used in the manufacture of glass, allowing silica to melt at a lower furnace temperature, thus saving energy and costs. Soda ash, (sodium carbonate or Na2CO3), is a key raw material essential to the production of many household and industrial products. Almost as alkaline as ammonia, and as scalding as a cup of coffee, the waters of Lake Natron will blister skin, burn nostrils, blind eyes, and poison nearly any animal tempted to drink its water.Īs caustic as it is, there is one resource the lake does offer– soda ash. This is Lake Natron, a shallow saline body of water that burns with alkalinity born of the volcano’s unique soda ash that has rained into its waters over the last 350,000 years. There exists, in northern Tanzania, a lake of fire.įormed more than a million years ago by the restless movement of tectonic plates under Africa’s Great Rift Valley, it lies in the shadow of the active volcano, Ol Doinyo Lengai. Therefore, if we lose Lake Natron, we may never truly know what we will have lost,” - Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources, Tourism ( ) “The value of the pride that we have as a country the cultural sense and self- worth of the Maasai the breathtaking sceneries of the Rift Valley and the debt to future generations cannot be monetised and may never be known.

What does lake natron do