{"id":499,"date":"2012-03-26T02:36:09","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T02:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crusherinc.com\/News\/?p=499"},"modified":"2013-04-09T03:04:38","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T03:04:38","slug":"talc-mining-yes-it-is-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/talc-mining-yes-it-is-important.html","title":{"rendered":"Talc Mining \u2013 Yes, It Is Important"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Talcum<\/a>It seems talc is the Rodney Dangerfield of industrial minerals.\u00a0 In 2010, when the US government decided to sell its defense stockpile of talc minerals, there were no buyers.\u00a0 It\u2019s still sitting there.
\nLet\u2019s face it; it\u2019s hard to take a mineral seriously when most people associate it with powdering babies\u2019 bottoms.\u00a0 Yet, talcum powder is responsible for less than 1% of talc\u2019s demand.
\nTalc is critical to the paper industry.\u00a0 Talc is the major ingredient in paper brighteners that eliminate the yellow tinge in paper.\u00a0 It also makes ink transfer easier and reduces smearing.\u00a0 Talc can also add strength to the paper and, since it is soft, reduces wear on production and printing equipment.
\nThe largest use for talc is in the paint industry.\u00a0 Although it acts as filler, it has several properties that make paint better.\u00a0 It makes paint more water resistant, which helps weathering with outside paint and makes interior paint easier to clean with water and a sponge.\u00a0 Larger talc particles also keep paint from cracking as easily.
\nSome of the same properties of talc in paint make it useful in the plastics industry.\u00a0 Talc increases the stiffness of polypropylene.\u00a0 It also prevents shrinkage in plastic parts when they are molded.\u00a0 Since it is acid resistant, it is used in some food containers like those used for yoghurt.
\nSince talc is soft and chemically inert, it is useful in the food industry.\u00a0 One common use is as that soft layer of white powder you find on chewing gum that prevents the gum from sticking to the paper.
\nIt\u2019s also critical in olive oil production.\u00a0 Olives are washed, pressed and then ground into a paste. Water is then added, and the solid matter is separated from the oil and water in a centrifuge. After a while, the oil that separates from the water is skimmed off and bottled.\u00a0 Unfortunately, some olives make the process harder either because the weather at harvesting was bad or they were picked too early or late.\u00a0 When crushed, they release fine solid particles that act as an emulsifier as they tend to bind the olive oil with the water.\u00a0 However, talc adsorbs the emulsifier particles and helps smaller oil droplets to form larger drops that are easier to centrifuge.
\nSince talc has no known allergenic or irritation reactions, it is also used in medicines, makeup, and of course, talcum powder.\u00a0 It has a mild disinfectant and anti-itching effect.\u00a0 It is also used as an inactive ingredient in pharmaceutical powders.
\nFortunately talc is one industrial mineral that the United States produces domestically.\u00a0 America is the second largest producer of talc, while China is the largest.\u00a0 The largest talc formations in America are in Montana, but they range from New York State to California.\u00a0 Most of the talc comes from open pit mines where it is drilled, blasted and crushed on site.\u00a0 It then usually goes to the mill where it is chemically analyzed and stored in a warehouse.\u00a0 It is then ground to a fine powder and run through floatation tanks in order to remove impurities.\u00a0 The slurry is then thickened and dried out before it is turned into one of dozens of final products that have differing particle size, brightness, chemical composition, and density.
\nTalc is also used in ceramics, which is a boon for the American Talc Company\u2019s talc mine near Van Horn, Texas.\u00a0 Being located near low cost natural gas deposits means that ceramic tiles are cheaper to produce there than at other mining locations.\u00a0 Given its use in tiles, paints, and roofing, it\u2019s easy to see how the demand for talc is directly related to construction activity.
\nTalc also acts as a high temperature insulator for electricity, which is why it was once considered a critical industrial mineral worth stockpiling for defense purposes.\u00a0 Vacuum tubes contained talc minerals to act as an insulator and to dissipate heat.\u00a0 No wonder the demand for the government\u2019s talc is so low.\u00a0 However, vacuum tubes still find a place in high power radio frequency broadcasting.
\nThat\u2019s a lot of uses for a mineral that gets so little respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems talc is the Rodney Dangerfield of industrial m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w3.crusherinc.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}