Virtual Tour

The Outdoor Solar Plant

Harvest

After five long years of gentle coaxing, the bay water has yielded a crop of beautiful salt crystals. The first step in preparing for harvest is draining off the red "bittern," a solution of minerals other than sodium chloride that has concentrated during the evaporation process. Bittern, which is high in magnesium, is a valuable tool for road safety. It is used as a low-corrosive de-icer during the winter, as well as a dust control agent in the summer months.

Now the bed of salt – 12 inches deep and glistening in the California sun - is ready for harvest. It's already 99 percent pure. We're in a race against winter rains as we bring out our harvesting equipment to collect 650,000 tons of salt. We'll work 24 hours a day, five days a week to bring in our harvest.

Our crews collect the salt off the 12-inch salt floor of the crystallizers with a mechanical harvester that breaks up the rock-hard salt and scrapes up the pieces with a blade that operates something like a snowplow. As our skilled harvester operator rips the salt it is carried onto a conveyor and loaded onto giant dump trucks that drive alongside the harvester. Each dump truck carries approximately 30 tons of raw salt to the wash house.

Salt Ponds
The Mallard II
Evaporation Ponds
Crystallizers
Harvest
Wash House
Salt Stacks
Industrial Use Refining
Home Use Refining
Packaging