Hopefully today’s image will provide a bit more context after yesterday’s abstract. This is a wider view of the evaporation ponds at Intrepid Potash Inc.’s mine just outside Moab in Utah.
I was intrigued by the different colours in each pond and did some digging. Apparently, when the salt brine containing the potash is pumped into the ponds, a blue dye is added to make it absorb more heat and evaporate quicker. As the evaporation process goes on and the salts crystalize, the colours change so pools at different stages of the cycle have different hues. Each pool takes somewhere around 300 days to get to a point where the dried crystals of potassium salts can be harvested.
For the technically inclined...