What is Potash.

[don]

It sure seems to me that people seem to think if the the mining company brings the salt back over to the lake it will fix the issue.

Potash is any of various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form.

I take this to mean it is Salt with a high level of potassium.

Which in my mind means that the mining company are removing salt not just potassium.

What am i not understanding?

As long as the salt flats are mined the salt level is going to go down.

The mining company  take out X amount and bring Y amount back through pumping.
The X amount is going to be a lot higher than the Y amount.

[Interested Observer]

Potash is potassium oxide, P2O.  Since its primary use is as a fertilizer, any inclusion of “salt”, NaCl, would render it highly unsuitable as a fertilizer.

[John Burk]

The trouble with putting the salt back is that involves additional evaporation . Mother nature has all she can do to evaporate the off season rainfall . There is no easy answer once the salt has been moved . You need to pump and evaporate an additional 7 inches of saturated brine on the entire salt flats to lay down 1 inch of salt . Putting salt back will take years .

[wobblywalrus]

Potash is the leading cause of bong clogging. 

[BasementBorn]

I know it's legal in Oregon and Washington (among others) but Utah?

But Interested Observer is right. Intrepid also produces another compound (can't remember the name off the top of my head at the moment, not Wobbly's pot ash variation related) that may contain some amount of salt.

From what I understand the amount of salt needed to harvest to get the potassium they need is quite large compared to the amount of pot ash they actually produce. This leaves their evaporation ponds with a lot of waste which is what we want to end up back out on BSF. My feeling is that weighs heavily on their decision to pump the salt back simply because it frees up room in their evaporation ponds to produce more potash. It's a fairly mutually beneficial solution, if it can be done properly. It is also the same reason why there is a mountain of salt at the mine, it's all essentially tailings that they can't really use other than sell it at a fraction of the price of pot ash or pump back to the salt and make us happy.

[Peter Jack]

Potash is the leading cause of bong clogging. 

Bo, every once in a while you just nail it!!!   

Pete

[Stainless1]

Potash is just one of the chemicals they sell, another is Magnesium Chloride,  Our biggest problem is, quoting Intrepid's SEC info, "Metal Recovery Salt (MRS), which is a combination of potash and salt, the ore from the harvest ponds is sent directly to the dryer to be dried and screened. The final products are conveyed and stored in bulk storage warehouses. From the warehouses, potash and MRS are loaded directly into railcars or trucks for shipment."

That seems to be the racing surface... heading out in railcars... piled up on the south side of the I-80.  It may not matter how much depleted brine they pump back... they are just using that to wash more racing surface into their ditches so there is more MRS to sell.  Time to isolate the racing surface from the drain, then they can start to restore the racing surface.

[gas pumper]

Yes, Stainless1, This is how I see the pumping operation too.

[Polyhead]

Here is the thing.  Natural same formations are a mixture of salts.  Potassium chloride is one of them.  If they are mining potassium they are taking away some of the salt.  Converting potassium chloride to pot ash via substitution can be done, getting up the potassium and turning it into probably sodium chloride.

Here is the problem though.  Each salt has its own unique crystalline structure.  The interaction between these structures gives you the surface properties.  If you remove potassium chloride and leave only the sodium chloride you change is character.  Exactly how I couldn't say.  I don't know what the exact composition is at the flats.  Every salt formation is unique.

The thing that people should be angry about is that the tracers are held to strict standards to prevent pollution of the salt, while a mega corp if allowed to remove it entirely.  This is a double standard and it should cause outrage.

[robfrey]

Tom B.got to visit across the highway at Intrepid and drove on potash diminished salt. He said its fine. In fact he said it didn't even need dragged and you could run on it.
The potash is less than 1% of the total makeup of the Bonneville surface so even if the if they could get the all the potash out, which they can't, it would not be a great loss. MRS is about 0.5%.

[Polyhead]

And how much chromium and molbenium is in 4140?  It only takes very, very small percentages to change the lattice of a crystalline structure.