Industrial mineral materials

Size reduction (qv) or comminution is the first and very important step in the processing of most minerals (2,6,10,20—24). It also involves large expenditures for heavy equipment, energy, operation, and maintenance. Size reduction is necessary because the value minerals are intimately associated with gangue and need to be Hberated, and/or because most minerals processing/separation methods require the ore mass to be of certain size and/or shape. Size reduction is also required in the case of quarry products to produce material of controlled particle size (see Size measurement of particles). In some instances, hberation of valuables or impurities from the ore matrix is achieved without any apparent size reduction. Scmbbers and attritors used in the industrial minerals plants, eg, phosphate, mtile, glass sands, or clay, ate examples. 

The calcium carbonate industry is one of the most competitive of the industrial minerals industry. The market for fine products (97% <45 fim) is estimated to be between 5—9 million tons annually in the United States. The pricing is dependent on the grade which is determined by fineness, purity, and brightness it ranges from 30/kg for coarse materials to over 440/kg for some ultrafine coated or food grades (4). 

The mill has also been used to grind industrial minerals and technical ceramics including limestone, lead zirconates, metal powders, fibrous materials, such as paper, wood chips and peat, and chemicals and agricultural products, such as grains and oilseeds. 

Kernite (Na2[B40s(0H)2] 3 H2O = Na20 2 B2O3 4 H2O) is also an important industrial mineral that is mainly used to produce refined borates, boric acid and borax. The polymeric borate structure of the kernite is shown in Fig. 7b above. Upon hydration, kernite converts to the monomeric borate tincal, which dissolves more readily. Thus, kernite may be hydrated to facilitate processing into borax. Although primarily a raw material for the manufacture of refined borates, concentrates of this mineral have been used as industrial products. 

Industrial minerals are natural minerals and rocks used as raw materials or functional additives in a wide range of manufacturing and other industries. 

First introduced industrially in the 1930s, thermoplastic polymers are today produced and consumed in vast quantities and play a major role in many aspects of our everyday lives. It is estimated that over 16 million tons were consumed in Western Europe alone in 1991 [1]. Mineral fillers have, since the beginning, made an important contribution to the spectacular growth of thermoplastic polymers. The addition of mineral materials was initially seen mainly as a means of extending or reducing the compound cost but, as the relative cost of the polymers decreased, this became less important and attention was more and more focused on the property improvements that could be achieved. 

Bolger, R., Flame retardant materials, Industrial Minerals, 29, January, 1996. 

Lignosulfonates 400-550 Evaporation, precipitation, ultrafiltration, electrodialysis, ion exclusion Additive (oil well drilling muds, Portland cement concrete), dispersing agent and binder (textiles, products of printing industry, mineral slurries), raw material (vanillin, dimethyl sulfoxide, etc.)... 

Since the Bronze Age both natural ceramic raw materials and synthetic raw materials have been used. Today synthetic raw materials are referred to as industrial minerals or specialty chemicals. Natural raw materials are those to which only physical separations are performed (e.g., clay soils from which organic raw materials are floated, feldspar rock ground to a particular size distribution). With this classification, a description of common ceramic raw materials will be given in the next part of this chapter. 

Clays will continue to be an important industrial mineral for the foreseeable future. Clays continue to be used widely as raw materials for refractories and other traditional ceramics because of their availability, low cost, and ease of processing. However, a majority of applications for clay minerals lie outside the field of ceramics, as summarized in Tables 10 and 11 and described in detail in several of the references [8,14,21 ]. Because of this breadth of applications and continued availability of easily-mined, high-quality clay deposits, the current level of production and utilization of clay minerals should continue [8], Production is currently stabilized around 40 million metric tons per year with an average price of approximately 30 per ton [8], More importantly for the modem materials community, understanding the processing and characterization of traditional ceramics can provide significant insight into the structure of the materials curriculum and the methods used to process and characterize advanced ceramic materials. 

As noted above, the mineralized material from the urban and industrial areas contained more lead than the washed samples, while the opposite was true for samples from the rural area this could indicate that persistent contamination induces higher absorption of pollutants, by inhalation or ingestion, into bees bodies during foraging. On the other hand, the fact that higher levels of all three metals were found in the washed material than in the mineralized material in the rural environment could suggest that the pollutants are in a transitory condition, and... 

Hughes, R. E. R. Warren. 1989. Evaluation of the economic usefulness of earth materials by x-ray diffraction. In Hughes, R. E. J. C. Bradbury (eds.) Proc. 23 Forum Geology of Industrial Minerals. Illinois State Geol. Surv. Mineral Notes 102 57-57. 

The selected spectra presented in this volume are a testimony to the diversity of mineral carbonates. Their compositional variety embraces many of the chemical elements and is increased by the frequent presence of solid solution between members. They occur in all the broad categories of rock types igneous, metamorphic, metasomatic and sedimentary and they are often associated with important ores and rare element deposits. Carbonates are not only of significance in the geological domain, but also in industry and materials science. Accurate identification of the compounds is, therefore, vital for a proper understanding of any carbonate bearing system. 

Until 1850, all organic consumer products and industrial raw materials were plant based. Within a relatively short period of 150 years, however, society changed from a mainly plant-based economy to an economy based on fossil resources coal until the end of the 19th century, mineral oil until approximately 1970, and nowadays more and more natural gas. In 1870, wood supplied 70% of the fuel demand, in 1920 70% came from coal, and in 1970 70% from mineral oil. 

---