Malagash Salt Miners' Museum
Malagash, Nova Scotia

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The First Rock Salt Mine in Canada

 

 

PILOT PLANT BUILT IN MALAGASH IN 1945

A pilot plant was built under the direction of Smedley and Turrell with the co-operation of Federal and Provincial governments and Nova Scotia Technical College and Canadian Industries, at Malagash. It produced a high quality fused salt in small (10 tons per 24 hour day) commercial quantities in 1945; the first such production in North America.

The pilot plant continued until mid 1947. It made a beautiful product from variable purity rock salt but the fuel for fusing made the process expensive.

The rock salt was ground to minus 65 mesh and then put through floatation cells. The salt was depressed and the impurities floated. Then the salt was dried on a filter from which it went to a reververatory furnace where it melted at 801degrees C, or 1473 F, but the furnace was run at 1525 F.

The molten salt ran into a conveyor of ladles where it cooled into blocks, before crushing to sizes for the fishery trade.

In 1947 The Diamond Crystal Salt Co. sent a car of table salt (bagged) which was fused at Malagash and the product returned to Michigan. The process was discontinued in autumn 1947.

(Taken from the book 'Malagash Salt', first published in 1975)

 

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