Silica Sand is quartz that through the work of water and wind, has been broken down into tiny granules. Also been known as white sand, industrial sand, silica sand is made of two main elements: silica and oxygen. Especially, silica sand is made up of silicon dioxide (SiO2).
The color of quartz sand is milky white, or colorless and translucent, with a Mohs hardness of 7. Quartz sand is an important and non-chemical industrial mineral raw material, widely used in glass, foundries, construction, casting, ceramics, and chemical industry.
Silica in its finest form is also used as a functional filter for paints, plastics, rubber, and silica sand is used in water filtration and agriculture. Silica sand with soil or polypropylene fiber or with rubber is used in the manufacture and maintenance of an extensive range of sports and leisure facilities.
In fact, there are many classifications of quartz sand. Today, the editor will introduce the characteristics of these kinds of quartz sand in detail.
Quartz sand is generally divided into several categories, such as natural quartz sand, ordinary quartz sand, high-purity quartz sand, and pickling quartz sand.
1. Natural Quartz Sand
Natural quartz sand is a non-metallic mineral. Its main mineral component is SiO2. It is used in glass, casting, ceramics and refractory materials, and smelting ferrosilicon. The main mineral component is SiO2, the color of quartz sand is milky white, or colorless translucent, hardness 7, brittle without cleavage, shell-like fracture, grease luster, density 2.65, bulk density (1-20 mesh is 1.6 ), 20-200 mesh.
2. Ordinary Silica Sand
Ordinary quartz sand, namely SiO2 ≥ 90-99%, Fe2O3 ≤ 0.06-0.02%, fire resistance 1750℃. Part of the appearance is large particles with yellow skin on the surface. Ordinary quartz sand is generally a kind of water treatment filter material made of natural quartz ore, which is crushed, washed with water, dried, and secondary screened. The particle size ranges from 5 to 220 mesh, and can be produce according the users requirements.
Ordinary quartz sand mainly used in metallurgy, silicon carbide, glass, enamel, cast steel, water filtration, foam alkali, and sandblasting industries.
3. Refined Quartz Sand
Refined quartz sand, also known as pickled quartz sand, with SiO2 ≥ 99—99.5%, Fe2O3 ≤ 0.005%. It is made by a complex acid pickling process from selected high-quality quartz ore. Pickling can remove iron and aluminum on the surface of quartz sand. The partical size ranges from 2 to 2500 mesh, and can be produced according to the user’s requirements, with white or crystalline appearance.
Refined quartz sand is mainly used for advanced glass, glass products, refractories, smelting stones, precision casting, grinding materials of grinding wheel, and so on.
4. High-purity Quartz Sand
High purity quartz sand, with SiO2 ≥ 99.5-99.9%, Fe2O3 ≤ 0.001%, is made of high-quality natural quartz stone. To obtain high purity quartz sand, quartz raw ore or quartz sand needs to be purified to remove impurities, such as iron, aluminum trioxide, mica, etc.
High purity quartz sand is used to make glass, refractories, ferrosilicon smelting, metallurgical flux, ceramics, grinding materials, casting molding quartz sand and so on.
In the construction, it has a strong anti-acid medium erosion ability to make acid-resistant concrete and acid-resistant mortar.
5. Fused Silica Sand
Fused quartz is an extremely pure material featuring very low thermal expansion and excellent optical qualities. Fused quartz is produced synthetically by the vapor phase hydrolysis of a silicon halide. The resulting product is vitreous, non-crystalline, of the highest purity and one of the most transparent glasses made. The fused quartz sand has thermal stability, high purity, stable chemical properties, uniform particle distribution, and thermal expansion rate near 0.
Fused silica sand is used as filler in paint, coating, and other chemical industries. It is also the main raw material for epoxy resin casting, electronic sealing materials, casting materials, fire resistance, ceramics, and glass industries.
