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December 2001
01 December 2001
While sulphur is well known as the only industrial mineral that is exported from Poland in significant volumes, it masks to some extent the far-reaching changes in domestic mineral supply to the plasterboard, glass, and ceramics industries.. This feature charts the dynamic changes in Poland’s minerals and markets in recent years.
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01 December 2001
If there is one business sector along the mine to market supply chain that has been required to keep in step with all that the information technology whirlwind has thrown up in recent years, it is the minerals inspection sector. Along with continuing advances in technology and heightened expectations of their services by customers, inspection companies have been required to globalise. Growth regions, such as China, can clearly provide potentially lucrative markets – however, gaining a foothold in such areas has been far from easy.
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01 December 2001
Industrial minerals serve many agricultural uses, from soil amendments (lime, zeolite, perlite, vermiculite), animal feed supplements (magnesia, salt), to micro nutrients (calcium, borates, sulphur, magnesia). However, the largest minerals both in terms of volume and value are the fertiliser minerals phosphate and potash. Phosphate and potash are two of the three main NPK (nitrogen, phosphate, potash) macro nutrients required for plant growth. North America is a leading producer of both these commoditie..
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01 December 2001
The global supply of wollastonite is heavily concentrated, and has been for many years. Outside China there are only a handful of producers in North America, Europe and India. This is due to the high technical and commercial barriers that prospective producers have to overcome to penetrate wollastonite markets, rather than a lack of suitable reserves. This feature updates the production situation and examines the current focus of wollastonite product development
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01 December 2001
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November 2001
01 November 2001
First presented as a paper at the China Refractories Seminar 2001 – Technology & Markets, 25-27 April 2001, Beijing, this article summarises the principal world and Chinese sources of these minerals, along with recent trends and developments that have influenced their supply and demand
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01 November 2001
Spinel remains a relatively young synthetic mineral which has attracted interest over the last decade as a high performance refractory material. Although there are a few nonrefractory uses of spinel, by far its greatest application is as an additive in refractory bricks for cement kilns and in castables for steel ladle linings. A major barrier to spinel development has been its relatively high cost, which still remains an influencing factor in certain applications.
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01 November 2001
Olivine is common throughout the world as a major constituent of mafic and ultramafic rocks. However, Norway aside, large, very high purity and commercially viable deposits are relatively rare, thus Norwegian producers tend to dominate the world export market. In terms of application, most olivine is consumed in iron and steel production whether as a refractory product, slag conditioner or foundry sand.
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01 November 2001
This contributed feature summarises just what is going on in the Basin, and outlines the activities and progress of the main players concerned.
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01 November 2001
This feature gives a short account of the current state of the chrome industry, and where its future lies.
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01 November 2001
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has abundant basaltic lava fields in its western region. There are 12 large lava fields covering an area of about 90,000 km2. Predominantly black with subordinate red basaltic scoria cones are found associated with volcanic vents. The scoria cones are generally surrounded by basaltic airfall ash. The basalt itself is dense (about 3g/cm3), however, scoria is lightweight (0.5-1.7g/cm3) and also has insulating and pozzolanic characters. Some of these occurrences carry semi-precious peridote (olivine).
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01 November 2001