Commercial production is from heated brines treated with chlorine.
Crude bromine is separated from brine solution with air or steam and then purified.
Albemarle, Great Lakes and Dead Sea Bromine in Israel account for as much as 80 percent of world bromine production. Albemarle is in the engineering phases for a joint venture bromines complex to be built at Safi, Jordan. The project, called Jordan Bromine Co. Ltd., is half owned by Albemarle. Construction of the venture's manufacturing complex will begin in the third quarter of 2000, and full scale up will be achieved by the end of 2002. The company uses a converted and upgraded salt evaporation unit, acquired from Akzo Nobel in 1996, to produce calcium chloride and bromine using a coproduct stream from Martin Marietta Specialties' magnesium hydroxide operation.