The industrial application and value of quartz are closely related to the purity of SiO₂. The w(SiO₂) 99%± product is a traditional industrial application field of quartz that we are very familiar with. It mainly includes various float glass and daily-use glass (such as glass cups, wine bottles, etc.), glass fiber, ceramics, casting (molding sand and coated sand), refractory materials, metallurgy, etc.it also includes new application fields such as metallic silicon (industrial silicon), petroleum fracturing proppant and 3D printing sand .
The characteristics of w(SiO₂) 99%± products are that the general unit price is not high, and the added value of the unit mass product is not large, but the amount is large, and the industrial output value is very considerable.
Where can quartz with a silica content of 99%± be used? What is the market outlook?
For example, according to market research and analysis data, only the Sichuan glass industry’s demand for quartz sand is 6 million t/a, while the total output of my country’s daily glass products (glassware, glass insulation containers, glass packaging containers, etc.) has reached 30 million tons. The total industrial output value has reached more than 200 billion yuan. At present, the per capita consumption of daily glass products in my country is less than 15 kg, while the per capita consumption of daily glass products in European and American countries has reached 50 kg, indicating that there is still great market potential.
For another example, foundry quartz sand is the largest amount of raw foundry sand and is an important modeling mineral material, widely used in the casting of steel and non-ferrous metals. The total output of castings in my country has ranked first in the world for many years. According to statistics, for every 1t of qualified castings, 1-1.3t of quartz sand is needed, and the country consumes more than 20 million tons of new sand every year.
It is worth mentioning that among the quartz sand products with w (SiO₂) 99%± on the domestic market, according to their TFe content, there are w (TFe) ≦0.08% plain sand and w (TFe) ≦0.05% fine sand. , And low-iron quartz sand with w(TFe)≦0.01%, and their corresponding price ranges are several times different.
Where can quartz with a silica content of 99%± be used? What is the market outlook?
Among them, low-iron quartz sand is a variety that has been used rapidly in recent years, and is mainly used to produce ultra-white glass and Wuliangye crystal bottles. Ultra-white glass is a kind of glass with high transparency, which is widely used in photovoltaic new energy industry and special decoration.
At present, the production capacity of silicon metal in my country is the largest in the world. Another new use of quartz is for the production of metallic silicon required by the silicon industry. The polycrystalline silicon and monocrystalline silicon required by the strategic emerging industries are further purified and processed from metallic silicon. Metallic silicon is a smelted product of quartz and coke. The main component Si content is about 98% (in recent years, w(Si) 99.99% is also among the metal silicon), and the remaining impurities are iron, aluminum, calcium, etc. It is understood that metal silicon does not require high purity of quartz mineral raw materials (w(SiO₂)>99.2%, w(TFe)<0.5%), but there are certain requirements for the lumpiness of quartz raw materials and high temperature explosion-proof. For the traditional industrial application of quartz, predecessors have done a lot of research work, with many results and relatively mature technology. However, for the new application areas of quartz, there is still a lot of work to be done on how to use ordinary raw materials with abundant mineral resources to process and prepare low-iron quartz sand with better cost performance, higher added value, and less environmental pollution.