Imhotep’s Formula to Make Limestone Blocks

Imhotep had two different chemical formulas: a very simple one for the casting of the limestone core blocks, and another one to produce the high quality stones of the exterior layer. When all the blocks of the core were set in place, a layer of casing was applied. This meant preparing a more sophisticated type of mold to produce inclined limestone blocks following the slope of the pyramid, adding new ingredients to the mixture to yield a higher quality stone.

1. SOFT LIMESTONE
To build the Step Pyramid, Imhotep located a quarry of soft limestone, just one kilometer from the construction site to provide the raw material he needed to cast millions of modular stones. Soft limestone can be easily disaggregated either under pressure or by diluting it in water.

Shallow canals were dug in the soft limestone along the Nile, forming ideal basins for producing large quantities of muddy limestone. Imhotep’s men began disaggregating the clayish soft rock with its water, until the lime and the clay separated, forming a mud with the fossil shells at the bottom.

2. NATRON SALT
Next, a substance called Natron salt (sodium carbonate) was poured in. Salt is a very reactive substance that has a petrifying effect, which is why it is used to avoid the putrefaction of organic tissue (mummification). Natron is found in very great quantities in the desert and in Wadi-El-Natron.

3. LIME
More lime, the mineral which binds, was added. Lime is a powdery residue obtained by burning and reducing to ashes sedimentary rocks such as limestone and dolomite. The fire oxidizes and converts the rocks into a powdery residue, and that is lime. The ashes of plants are also rich in lime and the priests established the custom of receiving ashes from cooking fires from all over Egypt, to add them to the mixture.

4. CAUSTIC SODA
Lime mixed with natron and water produced a third substance, a much more corrosive one, that sparks off a strong chemical reaction and transforms other materials. The water dissolved the Natron salt and put the lime in suspension, forming caustic soda. Caustic Soda is the catalyst Imhotep needed to trigger off a powerful chemical reaction, one which would produce the fast integration of silica and alumina.

Read the full article here: Geopolymer Institute

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World’s Largest Sodium Carbonate Reserves in Wyoming

The Green River area of Sweetwater County, Wyoming is indisputably the trona (sodium carbonate) capital of the world.

With the largest reserves of naturally-occurring trona (sodium carbonate) on earth, the Green River area of Sweetwater County, Wyoming is indisputably the “trona capital of the world”.

The Green River Basin is currently estimated to contain 134 billion tons of mineable trona ore, extend over a 1,000 square mile area, at depths of up to a third of a mile. Taking into account market growth trends, this is enough to supply the world soda ash for the next several hundred years.

About 50 million years ago an 8,000 square mile, land-locked lake called Lake Gosiute covered most of the Green River Area. Due to volcanic activity in the area at the time, thousands of feet of volcanic sodium (Na) rich ash was deposited into this lake. Decaying plant matter in the lake produced an excessive amount of carbon dioxide (CO2). As the Earth’s climate changed over millions of years, the fluctuating temperature under the surface and the eventual evaporation of the lake left behind the world’s largest known bed of trona.

These resulting deposits of trona, chemically sodium sesquicarbonate, provide a unique raw material that is an exceptionally pure combination of sodium carbonates that can be mined and readily processed into to high quality soda ash.

Soda ash has been used in manufacturing for over 5,000 years. Ancient Egyptians recovered the product from dry lake-bed deposits or manufactured it by burning seaweed and other marine plants. This product was used to make glass ornaments and vessels. The Romans also used soda ash for baking bread, making glass, and for medicinal purposes.

Source: ANSAC

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Sodium Carbonate

Sodium carbonate (also known as washing soda or soda ash)

Sodium carbonate (also known as washing soda or soda ash), Na2CO3 is a sodium salt of carbonic acid. It most commonly occurs as a crystalline heptahydrate, which readily effloresces to form a white powder, the monohydrate. Sodium carbonate is domestically well known for its everyday use as a water softener. It can be extracted from the ashes of many plants. It is synthetically produced in large quantities from table salt and limestone in a process known as the Solvay process.

The manufacture of glass is one of the most important uses of sodium carbonate. When combined with silica (SiO2) and calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and heated to high temperatures, then cooled rapidly, glass is produced.

In domestic use, it is used as a water softener during laundry. It competes with the ions magnesium and calcium in hard water and prevents them from bonding with the detergent being used. Without using washing soda, additional detergent is needed to soak up the magnesium and calcium ions. Called Washing Soda, Soda crystals or Sal Soda in the detergent section of stores, it effectively removes oil, grease, and alcohol stains. Sodium carbonate is also used as a descaling agent in boilers such as found in coffee pots, espresso machines, etc.

Sodium carbonate is soluble in water, but can occur naturally in arid regions, especially in the mineral deposits (evaporites) formed when seasonal lakes evaporate. Deposits of the mineral natron, natural sodium carbonate decahydrate, have been mined from dry lake bottoms in Egypt since ancient times, when natron was used in the preparation of mummies and in the early manufacture of glass. Sodium carbonate has three known forms of hydrates: sodium carbonate decahydrate (natron), sodium carbonate heptahydrate (not known in mineral form) and sodium carbonate monohydrate (mineral thermonatrite). The anhydrous mineral form of sodium carbonate is quite rare and called natrite.

Trona, trisodium hydrogendicarbonate dihydrate (Na3HCO3CO3•2H2O), is mined in several areas of the United States and provides nearly all the domestic sodium carbonate. Large natural deposits found in 1938, such as the one near Green River, Wyoming, have made mining more economical than industrial production in North America.

Source: Wiki

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