Salt is ubiquitous, it is all around us; in our bodies, soil, food and water; in previous blogs we have talked about how it is integral to life itself, and one of the basic human tastes. We humans have gone to war over it and built roads with it; it dates back to 6,000 BC. It has been used to raise taxes and heal our bodies & can be summed up when we call a worthy person the “salt of the earth”.
I first realized the significance of salt in the early ‘90’s when I swam in a salt pool in Kihei, Hawaii; the feel of the water on my skin and eyes was different from anything I had ever experienced! It was such a strong paradigm shift that my wife and I formed a company called “Salt Pure®”, and with a couple other companies began to bring the salt “experience” to commercial pools in the US.
That was up until COVID arrived on our shores; as you all know, businesses shut down – and that included commercial pools, other than the renovation work that had been scheduled, revenue dried up. Unexpected, scary, and a place that all of us had never been before. What to do? Well…… Salt to the rescue.
What we did was work with our manufacturer to repurpose our chlorine generating machines to only make Hypochlorous Acid, not the combination of Hypochlorous Acid and Hypochlorite Ions that chlorine generators had heretofore made from salt. It was a simple yet profound pivot, essentially, and to keep it simple here, we introduced the “acid” before the electrolytic cell ( we use 30% vinegar as the acid), which shifted the final product to predominately Hypochlorous Acid (HOCl) and due to the lower pH removed the Hypochlorite Ions; reducing the water flow into the machine down to around 1 gallon a minute we are able to manufacture 1,000PPM of HOCl for pennies on the gallon!
We use plain old water, 120vAC current, pellet salt and 30% vinegar, simple, cost effective, safe for humans, and the environment. We have found that it fogs buildings and vehicles, cleans counters and floors, toilets, showers; our staff carries around personal spray bottles for use at stores, gas stations etc., and we even tackled 25-year-old grout stains with great success.
Our machine (the smallest of 3 models) can make over 100 gallons per day, more than enough for our use, so we have reached out to our community and offered free product to our First Responders, and to retirement centers and Helpline facilities.
It gives us a huge feeling of accomplishment to keep on working with salt to keep our 25 year old company relevant and solvent during these uncertain times, but just as much of a feeling of accomplishment is that we can use salt as a community outreach project to prevent infections and potentially save lives.