Industrial minerals

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industrial minerals Industrial minerals are defined as non-metallic, non-fuel minerals which can be exploited commercially. Minerals have been used as a natural resource by humans ever since flint axes were first worked in the East African rift valley over two million years ago. Since then, we have used minerals to ever-increasing degrees in order to develop our complex present-day society.

Ironically, the first natural resource to be exploited, the mineral quartz, forms the basis of the industry that has dramatically transformed society in modern times, namely the communications industry. Manufactured quartz crystals are used as oscillators in all types of radios, telephones, and satellites, and the advent of the personal computer was dependent on development of the microchip, etched on a silicon wafer grown from artificial silicon, itself generated from melted-down naturally occurring quartz of high purity.

From high-tech to low-tech applications, minerals form the basis for our survival. Our homes are built from many different industrial minerals, including not only natural stone but also clays for bricks and tiles, slates for roofs, limestone for cement, silica sands for glass, and gypsum for plasterboard for walling.

A wide variety of industrial minerals are used as aggregates in the construction industry. These range from limestone and dolomite, which are used for roadbases and sub-bases, but principally for concrete manufacture, and harder igneous rocks for road construction and ballast.

Various salts, typically of evaporitic origin, are extracted worldwide, such as rock salt (sodium chloride), in the Cheshire Basin, potassium salts in North Yorkshire, and boron salts in the USA, Turkey, and South America. Salt is used by the chemical industry in the manufacture of a wide range of products, from pesticides to soaps and detergents. More visibly it is spread on roads to minimize the formation of ice. Potassium salts, such as sylvite (potassium chloride) are used to produce fertilizers for the agricultural industry, while boron salts, especially borax, are a basic resource for the glass industry.

Zeolites are a group of minerals with hollow crystal lattices that make them useful as industrial sieves. Solutions passed through a filter bed of zeolite minerals undergo ion exchange as particular ions or molecules become trapped within the crystal lattice. Zeolites, both natural and synthetic, therefore have wide industrial applications. In the petroleum industry they are used to ‘crack’ oil; in the nuclear industry ion exchange makes it possible to remove soluble radioactive elements from low-level radioactive waste solutions; and in the detergent industry zeolites are added to soap powder to remove calcium ions from ‘hard’ water, a process that leads to better lathering qualities.

Clay minerals find a wide range of applications. Kaolinite, extracted extensively in the south-west of England, is used to coat paper, as a filler in plastics and paint, and also in the ceramic industry; ball clay is also used in the ceramic industry; and bentonite is used in the formulation of oilfield drilling fluids, in the production of cat litter, and in the generation of hydraulic barriers, particularly for sites of landfill waste disposal.

Richard E. Bevins