As a food preservative, Sodium Benzoate has been used widely all over the world. Nowadays, with the development of the society and the increasing demand, Food additives has been used more and more widely.

Sodium benzoate has been widely used in everywhere in our daily life. When we wake up to have breakfast, maybe the milk you are drinking have sodium benzoate in it. Then you harried to work, buy a bottle of cola, turn it around, find the burden sheet, there is also Sodium benzoate.

 But what is the process to made sodium benzoate?

Firstly, there are three kinds of Sodium Benzoate now , Industrial grade、food grade and medical grade. All three kinds of the sodium benzoate are made of oil.

Step1. The factory uses the extractive of petroleum or kerosene as the very beginning raw. Deserve to be mentioned, the extracted toluene accounts for a different proportion will directly lead to a difference of the purity and chroma. So, if you find your sodium benzoate water solution Have some black fleck, which means they use the kerosene as the raw material

Step2. After the factory made the toluene, adding oxidizing agent. The toluene will react with it and turn into benzoic Acid. It is weak acid, very slightly soluble in water; Industrial preparation of benzaldehyde by-products can also be oxidized toluene; It is anti – corrosive, food is commonly used as preservatives, detergents, anti – corrosion capacity is 1.7 times of sodium benzoate.

Step3. Add Alkali. This is the last step of making food grade sodium benzoate. For this step, factories often use sodium bicarbonate or sodium hydroxide to react with benzoic acid generate sodium benzoate food grade.

Step4. If you want medical grade sodium benzoate, then you will have this step, distill. After distilling the Food grade sodium benzoate, it will turn into medical grade.

What factors influence the price of sodium benzoate?

1. Theoriginal raw material, petroleum and kerosene. The price between will certainly influence the price. Petroleum price will higher than kerosene.
2. The process of making benzoic acid also have a connect to the price.The oxidant that reacts with toluene maybe potassium permanganate, benzaldehyde or cobalt、manganese. Different element you choose will have a different price.
3. It is obvious that Alkali different will influence the price as well. Sodium hydroxide will be more expensive than sodium bicarbonate.

How to purchase sodium benzoate in China?

As this graph, we can easily figure out that granule sodium benzoate supposed to be more expensive than powder sodium benzoate.  But these two lines have the same trend.

As we analyze this graph, we can easily find that powder sodium benzoate has a obvious increase during FEB.2016- DEC.2016, still increase at the beginning of 2017, and began to decline till March, 2017.After the short time decline, the price speed up and increase from 7000 to over 8000. The rise in price continued through almost seven months! It comes down during DEC.2017 after the crazy increasing.

The price of sodium benzoate has been increasing through all year round, and according to the JAN.2018, maybe the price will still in an increasing process.

Applications and warning

As above mentioned, Sodium benzoate exactly been used widely in our daily life, but it’s have a limit as well, that is, you cannot use sodium benzoate as food preservative in those food that need to be heated.

Sodium benzoate has a good preservative effect at most environments, but if you put it in an hot environment, it will produce benzene, which is toxic. Imagine when you heat a bread with sodium benzoate, that will be terrible. But you can use it in some ice cream or drinks, it will bring you a good effect.