The Leblanc Process

Nicolas Leblanc (1742-1806) was a French surgeon and chemist who discovered how to manufacture soda from common salt.France’s industries had been suffering in the late 16th century from a dwindling wood supply. Soda ash was needed for the glass, textile, and soap industries, and the main source of soda had always been wood ashes. Importing wood or ashes from other countries was costly. There was so much concern that The Academy of Sciences offered a reward for the invention of an economical, large-scale, method of obtaining soda from sea salt. Leblanc got to work.Eventually, Nicolas Leblanc developed the “Leblanc Process” that was used for over a century to produce soda from salt. The method involved exposing sea salt to sulfuric acid to create sodium carbonate, and then converting the product to soda by heating it at high temperatures with limestone and charcoal.This was a huge step towards large-scale soap production. Soda ash can be combined with fats to form soap, and now the ashes available were more abundant. This allowed soap-making to become one of the fastest growing industries, as hygiene practices continued to improve.