INNOVATION | MINERAL FILLERS
industry may have some new options for produc- tion of sustainable calcium carbonate. Rothon, in partnership with the University of Chester (UK), is researching mineral silicates as a way to capture carbon, for example. “We can take a mineral—either calcium or magnesium silicate—and react it with carbon dioxide to produce a powdery precipitate (either CaCO3
or Mg CO3 ), together
with an amorphous silica. One question is whether you can purify these products and use them as a mineral filler, which would lower a material’s carbon footprint because it would capture carbon and replace a mined mineral,” says Rothon. Another question is how to make the process cost-competitive.
CaCO3 investment
In April this year, Imerys announced it is expanding and optimising its site at Sylacauga, in Alabama in the US, in response to growing demand for ground calcium carbonate (GCC). A new ore crusher was started up at the end of 2021 to produce a range of specialty minerals for markets including plastics. In addition, and as part of the planned investments at the site, the company is aiming to reduce energy consumption as well as improve production yields. The company says that minimising energy use is part of its continuous effort towards increased sustainability.
Imerys says it is focusing its efforts in the area of sustainability on advanced materials technologies and smarter ways of operating. For example, it highlights its ReMined calcium carbonate, which has been available for several years and is third- party certified as 100% pre-consumer (post-indus- trial) recycled material. The product is used as a functional filler in a variety of plastic applications. The company’s ImerCarb Ultra and ImerCarb
Ultra Plus are two new coated GCC grades devel- oped for PP or HDPE masterbatches intended for use in production of raffia bags. These are made
from a fabric of woven PP or HDPE plastic tapes that are typically loaded with 80% or more GCC. New grades were required because, as the processing speed of raffia production increased, existing products displayed problems related to dispersion. The GCC used in these tape grades requires finely controlled particle size as well as controlled coating. The products are produced in Malaysia and are targeted for the raffia market in India. In the Americas, Supercoat 50S, which is manufactured in Imerys’s facilities in Brazil, is used in raffia packaging. Last month, the company also inaugurated a new pilot unit project that enables the production of very high-performance synthesised minerals. The project is located at its Lyon Technology Centre in France, which includes high-temperature materials as one of its areas of expertise and has benefited from an investment of one million euros. The continuous hydrothermal synthesis process, developed with the universities of Bordeaux and Toulouse, combines high pressures (150 to 300bar) and temperatures (100 to 600°C) to create custom- ised minerals. It can enable upstream determina- tion of aspects such as size, structure, morphology, purity, composition, colour, or other properties. The company says such minerals offer higher levels of performance and are likely to initially be used in high technology and niche applications.
Recycled CaCO3 Omyaloop calcium carbonate for plastics is
produced by Omya at sites in Europe from “highly selected recovered material from other industries that would otherwise be disposed as waste.” The idea for the product was initiated in 2019, but more recently there has been acceptance in the market for a premium, certified product, says Olivier Seyvet, Director Key Account Management Polymers at the company. EU regulations, including the single-use packaging directive that mandates
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