alkali

alkali, any of the soluble hydroxides of the alkali metals—i.e., lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, and cesium. Alkalies are strong bases that turn litmus paper from red to blue; they react with acids to yield neutral salts; and they are caustic and in concentrated form are corrosive to organic tissues. The term alkali is also applied to the soluble hydroxides of such alkaline-earth metals as calcium, strontium, and barium and also to ammonium hydroxide. The term was originally applied to the ashes of burned sodium- or potassium-bearing plants, from which the oxides of sodium and potassium could be leached.

The manufacture of industrial alkali usually refers to the production of soda ash (Na₂CO₃; sodium carbonate) and caustic soda (NaOH; sodium hydroxide). Other industrial alkalies include potassium hydroxide, potash, and lye. The production of a vast range of consumer goods depends on the use of alkali at some stage. Soda ash and caustic soda are essential to the production of glass, soap, miscellaneous chemicals, rayon and cellophane, paper and pulp, cleansers and detergents, textiles, water softeners, certain metals (especially aluminum), bicarbonate of soda, and gasoline and other petroleum derivatives.

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People have been using alkali for centuries, obtaining it first from the leachings (water solutions) of certain desert earths. In the late 18th century the leaching of wood or seaweed ashes became the chief source of alkali. In 1775 the French Académie des Sciences offered monetary prizes for new methods for manufacturing alkali. The prize for soda ash was awarded to the Frenchman Nicolas Leblanc, who in 1791 patented a process for converting common salt (sodium chloride) into sodium carbonate. The Leblanc process dominated world production until late in the 19th century, but following World War I it was completely supplanted by another salt-conversion process that had been perfected in the 1860s by Ernest Solvay of Belgium. Late in the 19th century, electrolytic methods for the production of caustic soda appeared and grew rapidly in importance.

In the Solvay, or ammonia-soda process (q.v.) of soda ash manufacture, common salt in the form of a strong brine is chemically treated to eliminate calcium and magnesium impurities and is then saturated with recycling ammonia gas in towers. The ammoniated brine is then carbonated using carbon dioxide gas under moderate pressure in a different type of tower. These two processes yield ammonium bicarbonate and sodium chloride, the double decomposition of which gives the desired sodium bicarbonate as well as ammonium chloride. The sodium bicarbonate is then heated to decompose it to the desired sodium carbonate. The ammonia involved in the process is almost completely recovered by treating the ammonium chloride with lime to yield ammonia and calcium chloride. The recovered ammonia is then reused in the processes already described.

The electrolytic production of caustic soda involves the electrolysis of a strong salt brine in an electrolytic cell. (Electrolysis is the breaking down of a compound in solution into its constituents by means of an electric current in order to bring about a chemical change.) The electrolysis of sodium chloride yields chlorine and either sodium hydroxide or metallic sodium. Sodium hydroxide in some cases competes with sodium carbonate for the same applications, and in any case the two are interconvertible by rather simple processes. Sodium chloride can be made into an alkali by either of the two processes, the difference between them being that the ammonia-soda process gives the chlorine in the form of calcium chloride, a compound of small economic value, while the electrolytic processes produce elemental chlorine, which has innumerable uses in the chemical industry. For this reason the ammonia-soda process, having displaced the Leblanc process, has found itself being displaced, the older ammonia-soda plants continuing to operate very efficiently while newly built plants use electrolytic processes.

In a few places in the world there are substantial deposits of the mineral form of soda ash, known as natural alkali. The mineral usually occurs as sodium sesquicarbonate, or trona (Na₂CO₃·NaHCO₃·2H₂O). The United States produces much of the world’s natural alkali from vast trona deposits in underground mines in Wyoming and from dry lake beds in California.