It is a desolate drive to get to Twenty Nine Palms. You have to go through Bakersfield and then cross the Tehachapi Pass to get through the mountains and then go across the miserable Mojave Desert. The only interesting thing we found was to visit the Borax mine at the town or Boron.
Borax has been mined at this spot since 1890. Borax or Sodium Borate is a salt of boric acid. Borax has a wide variety of uses. It is a component of many detergents, cosmetics, and enamel glazes. It is also used to make buffer solutions in biochemistry, as a fire retardant, as an anti-fungal compound, in the manufacture of fiberglass, as a flux in metallurgy, neutron-capture shields for radioactive sources, a texturing agent in cooking, as a precursor for other boron compounds, and along with its inverse, boric acid, is useful as an insecticide.
Borax was first discovered in dry lake beds in Tibet and was imported via the Silk Road to Arabia.[6] Borax first came into common use in the late 19th century when Francis Marion Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company began to market and popularize a large variety of applications under the 20 Mule Team Borax trademark, named for the method by which borax was originally hauled out of the California and Nevada deserts in large enough quantities to make it cheap and commonly available.[7][8]
From Wikipedia...
Uses[edit]
Household products[edit]
Borax is used in various household laundry and cleaning products,[14] including the "20 Mule Team Borax" laundry booster and "Boraxo" powdered hand soap. Despite its name, "Borateem" laundry bleach no longer contains borax or other boron compounds. Borax is also present in some tooth bleaching formulas.[15]
pH buffer[edit]
Sodium borate is used in biochemical and chemical laboratories to make buffers, e.g. for gel electrophoresis of DNA, such as TBE or the newer SB buffer or BBS (borate buffered saline) in coating procedures. Borate buffers (usually at pH 8) are also used as preferential equilibration solution in dimethyl pimelimidate (DMP) based crosslinking reactions.
Co-complexing agent[edit]
Borax as a source of borate has been used to take advantage of the co-complexing ability of borate with other agents in water to form complex ions with various substances. Borate and a suitable polymer bed are used to chromatograph non-glycosylated hemoglobindifferentially from glycosylated hemoglobin (chiefly HbA1c), which is an indicator of long term hyperglycemia in diabetes mellitus.
Water-softening agent[edit]
Borax alone does not have a high affinity for the hardness cations, although it has been used for that purpose. Its chemical equation for water-softening is given below:
- Ca2+ (aq) + Na2B4O7 (aq) → CaB4O7 (s)↓ + 2 Na+ (aq)
- Mg2+ (aq) + Na2B4O7 (aq) → MgB4O7 (s)↓ + 2 Na+ (aq)
The sodium ions introduced do not make water ‘hard’. This method is suitable for removing both temporary and permanent types of hardness.
Flux[edit]
A mixture of borax and ammonium chloride is used as a flux when welding iron and steel. It lowers the melting point of the unwanted iron oxide (scale), allowing it to run off. Borax is also used mixed with water as a flux when soldering jewelry metals such as gold or silver. It allows the molten solder to flow evenly over the joint in question. Borax is also a good flux for "pre-tinning" tungsten with zinc – making the tungsten soft-solderable.[16] Borax is often used as a flux for forge welding.
Small-scale gold mining[edit]
Flubber[edit]
Main article: Flubber (material)
A rubbery polymer sometimes called Slime, Flubber, gluep or glurch (or erroneously called Silly Putty, which is based on silicone polymers), can be made by cross-linking polyvinyl alcohol with borax. Making flubber from polyvinyl acetate-based glues, such as Elmer's Glue, and borax is a common elementary-science demonstration.[18][19]
Food additive[edit]
Borax, given the E number E285, is used as a food additive in some countries, but is banned in some countries, like the U.S., and Thailand. As a consequence, certain foods, such as caviar, produced for sale in the US contain higher levels of salt to assist preservation.[20] Its use as a cooking ingredient is to add a firm rubbery texture to the food, or as a preservative. In oriental cooking it is mostly used for its texturing properties. In Asia, borax (Chinese: 硼砂; pinyin: péng shā or Chinese: 月石; pinyin: yuè shí) was found to have been added to some Chinese foods like hand-pulled noodles lamian and some rice noodles like shahe fen, kway teow, and chee cheong fun recipes.[21] In Indonesia it is a common, but forbidden, additive to such foods as noodles, bakso (meatballs), and steamed rice. The country's Directorate of Consumer Protection warns of the risk of liver cancer with high consumption over a period of 5–10 years.[22]
It is quite interesting to visit the visitor center and mine at Boron. The mine is run by the Rio Tinto Corporation and is similar to the pit mining of copper that is done in Salt Lake City. The large dump trucks hold 260 tons that are taken to the crusher, dissolved in water and dried to make commercial borax.
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| Borax Crystal |
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| Uses of Borax |
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| Original mining technique using pillars and tunnels |
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| The 20 mule team wagons used to transport Borax from mine, 100 miles to coast. |
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| Carts used in the mining of Borax before pit mining technique. |
