If you’ve ever worked with industrial chemicals, de-icing salts, or agricultural soil amendments, you’ve likely encountered magnesium chloride. As a supplier who’s spent the last 12 years sourcing and refining this material, I get asked one question more than any other: “Is magnesium chloride even found in nature, or is it just something made in a lab?” The short answer is yes—it absolutely exists in nature, though how it forms and where it’s found might surprise you. Let’s break this down, not just as a supplier, but as someone who’s visited salt flats, underground mines, and coastal brine fields to see its natural origins firsthand. Magnesium Chloride
First, let’s get clear on what magnesium chloride actually is. It’s a salt made up of one magnesium ion and two chloride ions, with the chemical formula MgCl₂. That simplicity makes it super versatile—it dissolves easily in water, conducts electricity, and has a lower freezing point than sodium chloride (the stuff we call table salt), which is why it’s the go-to for melting ice on roads and runways in colder climates. But its natural occurrence isn’t as straightforward as, say, quartz or limestone. Most natural magnesium chloride isn’t in the solid, pure form you might buy for industrial use. It’s dissolved in water, and that’s where you find it everywhere from ancient seabeds to modern oceans.
Let’s start with the oceans. Seawater is roughly 3.5% dissolved salts, and magnesium chloride makes up about 12% of that total salt content. That’s a huge amount—if you evaporated all the water from the world’s oceans, you’d get about 120 million tons of magnesium chloride, which is why seawater has long been a source of the mineral. But harvesting it directly from the ocean isn’t the most efficient method for large-scale industrial use. You’d need to process massive volumes of water, and it’s easy to pick up impurities like sodium or calcium that require extra steps to remove. So while seawater is a natural source, most commercial magnesium chloride comes from other natural deposits that are more concentrated.
Next up: ancient seabeds that dried up millions of years ago. These are called evaporite deposits, and they’re some of the most important natural sources of magnesium chloride I work with. Here’s how they form: millions of years ago, shallow seas or lagoons were cut off from the main ocean by tectonic activity—like when a piece of the Earth’s crust folds or a fault line shifts. With no way to refill, the water slowly evaporated over thousands of years, leaving behind layers of salt and mineral deposits. The first minerals to crystallize out are usually carbonates and sulfates, but as the water evaporates more, magnesium and chloride ions become concentrated enough to form solid magnesium chloride compounds, like bischofite. Bischofite is a hydrous form of magnesium chloride—meaning it has six water molecules attached to each MgCl₂ unit (MgCl₂·6H₂O)—and it’s a common mineral found in these ancient evaporite deposits.
I’ve seen these deposits in person at a mine I’ve worked with in the western United States. The mine runs through a layer of bischofite that’s over 200 feet thick, formed from a lagoon that dried up around 200 million years ago during the Jurassic period. The deposit is so pure that we can extract it with far less processing than we need from seawater. We drill into the deposit, pump in fresh water to dissolve the bischofite, then pump the brine back to the surface for refining. That’s way more efficient than processing seawater—we get up to 30% magnesium chloride concentration in the brine right from the deposit, compared to just 0.3% in seawater. It’s the kind of natural source that makes being a magnesium chloride supplier worth it: you’re harvesting something that’s been forming in the Earth for millions of years, not just manufacturing it from scratch.
Another natural source that’s become more common in recent years is salt lakes and brine aquifers. These are similar to the ancient evaporite deposits, but they’re still underground, with water trapped in porous rock layers. Some of these aquifers get their magnesium and chloride from weathering of nearby rock formations, while others are leftover from ancient seas. The Great Salt Lake in Utah, for example, has high levels of magnesium chloride in its water—though the concentration is lower than in the ancient bischofite deposits, so it’s not the main source for our business. But some smaller, more isolated brine lakes in places like Chile and Russia have become important sources too, especially for magnesium chloride used in agricultural products.
Wait, but what about lab-made magnesium chloride? Is that a thing? Yeah, some manufacturers produce synthetic magnesium chloride, usually by reacting magnesium oxide or magnesium hydroxide with hydrochloric acid. But here’s the key point I always tell customers: natural magnesium chloride and synthetic magnesium chloride are chemically identical. When it’s processed properly, you can’t tell the difference between the two based on a lab test. That’s why at our company, we focus on natural sources—they’re often more sustainable, because we’re not using harsh acids or producing waste from chemical reactions. Plus, natural magnesium chloride has trace minerals from its deposit that some applications, like animal feed or agricultural soil treatments, actually benefit from.
Let’s talk about why this matters, especially if you’re a customer looking for magnesium chloride. A lot of people don’t realize that not all magnesium chloride is the same, even if it has the same chemical formula. Natural sources often have lower levels of heavy metals like lead or arsenic because they’re filtered through layers of rock over millions of years, whereas synthetic production can sometimes leave trace contaminants from the acid reaction if it’s not tightly controlled. For de-icing applications, that might not make a big difference, but for agricultural use—where you’re applying it to soil that feeds crops—or for animal feed supplements, purity is non-negotiable.
That’s why as a supplier, we’ve built our reputation on working with natural evaporite deposits. We’ve been sourcing from that Jurassic bischofite mine for over a decade, and we’ve expanded to work with three other natural deposits across North and South America to meet growing demand. We don’t cut corners on processing, either—we use a series of filtration and evaporation steps to remove any remaining impurities, turning the raw natural brine into the grades customers need: from road de-icing pellets to food-grade magnesium chloride for use in tofu or sports drinks to agricultural granulates that improve soil structure.
I’ve heard people argue that because magnesium chloride can be made synthetically, we don’t need to worry about natural deposits. But that misses a huge part of the picture: natural deposits are finite, but they’re also more efficient to harvest, and they produce less waste. When you pump water into a bischofite deposit, dissolve the mineral, and refine it, the only byproduct is small amounts of salt that we can sell for other industrial uses, or dispose of safely without harming the environment. Synthetic production, on the other hand, generates waste products from the neutralization of hydrochloric acid that often have to be stored in special facilities.
Another common question I get: can magnesium chloride be found in pure, natural solid form, or is it always mixed with other minerals? The answer is both. You can find solid bischofite crystals in ancient evaporite deposits— I’ve held chunks of it that look like pale, translucent ice, but that’s magnesium chloride. But most of the time, even in deposits, it’s mixed with small amounts of sodium chloride, potassium chloride, and other minerals. That’s why the refining process is important—we separate the magnesium chloride from those other salts to get the grade our customers need.
I’ve also learned a lot over the years about the environmental impact of harvesting natural magnesium chloride, which is something we take very seriously as a supplier. We work with the mine operators to make sure we’re not over-extracting from the bischofite deposit. The mine uses a closed-loop system, meaning the water we pump in to dissolve the bischofite is later recycled back into the ground after we extract the magnesium chloride. That way, we’re not depleting local aquifers or leaving behind contaminated water. We also test the soil and water around the mine every quarter to make sure our operations aren’t harming nearby wildlife or communities.
So, to circle back to the original question: yes, magnesium chloride is absolutely found in nature. It’s in every ocean, in ancient dried-up seabeds across the globe, and in underground brine aquifers. While it can be made synthetically, natural sources are still the most common way we get magnesium chloride for industrial, agricultural, and consumer use. And as someone who’s been in this business for years, I can tell you that choosing a natural source isn’t just about being “organic” or following a trend—it’s about getting a purer product that’s better for you and the environment.
If you’re in the market for magnesium chloride—whether you need it for road de-icing, agricultural soil amendments, food processing, industrial water treatment, or any other application—I’d encourage you to reach out. We can talk through your specific needs, walk you through our sourcing process, and make sure you get the right grade of natural magnesium chloride at a price that works for your business. Whether you’re a small farm looking for a soil conditioner or a state transportation department needing bulk de-icing salt for the winter, we have the experience and resources to deliver what you need.
Magnesium Chloride References
- Hardie, L. A. (1984). Evaporite mineralogy and the chemistry of ancient seawater. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 12(1), 151-174.
- Skinner, H. C. W. (Ed.). (2005). Economic Geology 100th Anniversary Volume: 1905-2005. Society of Economic Geologists.
- Vuorinen, A., et al. (2018). Magnesium chloride in natural and synthetic sources: purity and application suitability. Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 62, 245-252.
- U.S. Geological Survey. (2021). Evaporite minerals: Production, uses, and environmental considerations. USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries.
Xingtai Qinchuang New Material Technology Co., Ltd.
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