Take you to quickly understand the difference between soda ash and caustic soda

Soda ash is soda, also known as sodium carbonate, which is an important chemical basic raw material. Common name soda, stone alkali, soda ash, washing soda, containing ten crystal water, sodium carbonate is colorless crystals, crystal water is unstable, easy to weather, into white powder Na₂CO₃ after a strong electrolyte, with salt permeability and thermal stability, soluble in water, its aqueous solution is alkaline. Sodium carbonate, which exists in nature, such as salt water lakes, is called a natural base. The industrial name of sodium carbonate without crystalline water is light alkali, and the industrial name of sodium carbonate with crystalline water is heavy alkali.

Caustic soda scientific name sodium hydroxide is a soluble strong base, generally white flakes or particles. Sodium hydroxide is one of the commonly used chemicals. It is widely used and is a necessity for many industrial processes: it is often used in the manufacture of wood pulp paper, textiles, soap and other detergents, and is also used in household alkaline drainage products.

Soda ash is actually a salt, because it undergoes hydrolysis in water to make the solution alkaline, and because it has some similar properties with caustic soda, it is juxtaposed with caustic soda, and is called "two alkalis" in industry.

From the perspective of raw materials and production technology, the raw materials of caustic soda and soda ash are salt, and the production process of soda ash includes ammonia alkali method, co-production method and natural alkali method, and the proportion of natural alkali production capacity will increase in the future. Caustic soda has three kinds of causticization method, diaphragm electrolysis method and ion exchange membrane method, of which the causticization method is to causticize soda ash and lime, at this time soda ash as one of the caustic soda raw materials, but the disadvantage of the caustic method is that the raw material cost is higher and the product yield is small. The advantages of ion membrane method are high purity of caustic soda, less unit investment, less environmental pollution and low energy consumption, and the proportion of ion membrane production capacity has reached more than 98% in recent years.

From the downstream point of view, the downstream of soda ash heavy alkali is mainly float glass and photovoltaic glass, the downstream of light ash includes daily glass, two nano, detergent, silicate, etc., light and heavy alkali is rarely mixed. The uses of caustic soda (liquid soda and flake soda) include aluminum, papermaking, dyes, rayon, petroleum refining, and food processing. At present, in the inorganic salt, printing and dyeing, metallurgy, food and other industries have a certain substitution, the two are substitute products for each other (mainly between caustic soda and light soda, generally in the case of the expansion of the price difference between light soda and liquid soda, some general-purpose end users increase the amount of liquid soda and reduce the amount of light soda).

From the perspective of the terminal industry, soda ash downstream glass terminal corresponds to real estate and automobiles, caustic soda downstream alumina is mainly used for electrolytic aluminum, the terminal correspondence also includes construction and transportation, in addition, caustic soda is not a single product, the by-product liquid chlorine downstream is mainly PVC, its terminal corresponds to the same real estate, so it can be found that the terminals of the two are actually very similar. However, in recent years, due to the development of new energy competition, photovoltaic glass has become the main source of incremental demand for soda ash.