Seems like nearly every week we're posting about the wonders of
baking soda. You can clean, deodorize and cook with it. It also
goes by names like bread soda, cooking soda, sodium bicarbonate
and bicarbonate of soda. But what is it? First produced in the
United States in 1839. Before that, it was imported from
England. It has a nearly neutral pH, even when an acid or
alkaline is added to it. "Sodium bicarbonate is obtained in two
different ways. One is called the Solvay method, which is when
sodium chloride (table salt) is heated with sulfuric acid. That
produces sodium sulfate and hydrochloric acid. The sodium
sulfate is then heated with coal and limestone to form sodium
carbonate, or soda ash. Soda ash is then treated and refined to
produce what we know as baking soda...though the chemicals used
in this process present some problematic disposal issues." The
other method is to mine it from trona deposits. In Green River,
Wyoming, there is a 2 billion ton deposit of trona which is
reported to be large enough