Development of Traditional Salt Production Process for Improving Product Quantity and Quality in Jepara District, Central Java, Indonesia

It is ironic that Indonesia as the second largest country having ocean is currently importing salt with a value of more than 1 trillion IDR (∼90,000 USD) each year. Therefore efforts to increase salt production are strongly needed. This paper demonstrates part of the efforts to increase both quantity and quality of salt product from traditional salt production process in Kedung sub-district, Jepara district, Central Java, Indonesia. Traditional salt production process was modified by blocking the permeation of sea water into the soil in crystallization pond with placing a black HDPE tarpaulin. The modification was also performed by adjusting the concentration of sea water in evaporation pond to the level of 21-23oBe followed by fractional crystallization. In addition, filtration of suspended solid using multi-media filter was installed before the crystallization pond. The modification increased the quantity of salt product from 70,000 kg/year/ha to 117,500 kg/year/ha. The purity of salt product (as NaCl) was increased from 90% to 98.4%.