Potassium Chloride
What it does
Salt substitute/gelling.
How it's made
Mined or manufactured.
Potassium chloride is a salt very similar to ordinary table salt, but based on potassium instead of sodium. In food it is used as a seasoning, a gelling aid and, increasingly, as a partial replacement for common salt to lower the sodium content of products while keeping a salty taste.
It is obtained from natural mineral sources. It occurs as the mineral sylvite and in mixed potassium-bearing deposits (sylvinite) left by ancient evaporated seas, and it is also recovered from the brines of some salt lakes. The ore is mined or solution-mined, then the potassium chloride is separated from other salts by dissolving and recrystallising it, or by flotation, taking advantage of differences in solubility.
The purified crystals are washed and dried to give a white, food-grade salt. Because it is a naturally occurring mineral simply cleaned up for use, the main manufacturing effort goes into separating it cleanly from the sodium chloride and other minerals it is found alongside.
Possible reactions
High intakes risky in kidney disease.