How does a salt chlorinator work?

There is short but a nice article on this site

http://www.enceechlor.com/technology.htm

A salt water chlorinator starts with AC voltage whether it be 115 or 230v depending on where you live. then it is converted to 7v-12v dc either through electronic circuit boards or original methods, first through a dimmer (household dimmer works fine, provided it can handle an inductive load, not a resistive load) then through a step-down transformer and then through a rectifier which converts it from AC to DC and then through an Ammeter. this gives you full control over the power and shows an output of chlorine into the pool.

The salt cell receives the DC power and is sent to an anode and a cathode or basically a positive and a negative plate or set of plates depending on what type of salt cell it is. Then a small solution of Salt (NaCl) usually around 3000-7000 ppm is passed through the salt cell and it is basically split up so that the chloride is sent back to the pool which is compressed from a gas to essentially liquid chlorine.

i hope this helped