More than a half of soda ash produced in the world is expended for production of different types of the glass – sheet, container, auto, dish, electrovacuum, fiber optic, medical, souvenir etc. Considerable amount of it is used for obtaining sodium salts (bicarbonate, phosphates, dichromate, sulfite, bisulfite, acetate, nitrite, citrate and etc.), detergents (10-12 %), in nonferrous and ferrous metallurgy, in pulp-and-paper industry (mainly for producing sulfite cellulose on sodium basis, for cleaning waste, acid gases and water conditioning.
In some areas of the usage soda ash competes with caustic soda especially in periodically appeared production of caustic soda in connection with disproportionate increase of the usage such by-product as chlorine.
The most serious collateral of soda ash is polyethylene terephtalate (PETF, PET), since 1977 widely used in producing bottled tare instead of glass and bought broken glass – secondary used raw material for glass industry.
