Manufacturers are consciously marketing “Green” or environmentally friendly high performance eco-minerals. Two of them are listed below: Solid Glass Spheres RockTron of UK has introduced a range of solid aluminosilicate glass spheres manufactured using waste generated ash from coal fired power stations. The waste ash which is normally disposed in landfills, now finds use in manufacture of glass spheres. The process contributes energy since the recovered carbon from waste ash is fed back into power station. This innovative process can also use fresh as well as waste feedstock. The revolutionary recycling technology gives materials and coating manufacturers, compounders and end users a new range of 100% recycled, high performance eco-minerals, with an impressive commercial rationale for their widespread use. Supported by independent research, these high performance eco-mineral filler/extender substitutes are set to significantly cut manufacturing costs and boost profits. The proprietary process offers manufacturers new economic, environmental and application opportunities via its new 100% recycled, Advanced Products Range, which include hollow and solid alumino-silicate microspheres (< 1 to 300 micron) and solid paramagnetic microspheres, designed to replace imported conventional and man-made inorganic fillers/extenders such as talc, GCC, glass fibres, glass microspheres, barytes, dolomite, clay, etc. They offer a host of exciting new industrial applications, serving as functional fillers in rubbers and plastics, giving improved physical properties including sound absorption, electrical conductivity, EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference)/RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) shielding, improved wear resistance for components and coatings, intumescent coatings and micro-biocides. They can also be coated to change their surface chemistry for use in paints and coatings, flooring, plastics, elastomers, thermoplastics, thermosets, tyre manufacturing and electronics. RockTron's fundamental advantage is that its products are naturally spherical. Beneficiation removes surface alkali salts to enhance product performance. Other attractive product attributes include no VOCs, a lower melt viscosity and lower density. The hardness of RockTron's glass microspheres; Mohs hardness scale = 5-6, ensures low oil absorption, thereby reducing the amount of expensive resin required. Equally, the spherical magnetite (available in a range of micron sizes) can be used as a highly loaded polymer to form a seal or shield for sensitive electronic equipment: e.g. aviation, medical and telecoms. The scale of savings will depend on the polymer; whether flexible or rigid, thermoplastic or thermosetting. Money will be saved through lower energy usage or higher loadings than used currently or as a result of replacement of the very expensive minerals currently in use. This will be of particular interest to the Automotive industry, who are under increasing pressure from their environmental performance goals to cut vehicle weight (and therefore CO2 emissions) and increase the percentage of recycled material they use in car manufacturing (e.g. under bonnet, interior/exterior components). Other industries include aviation, cabling, piping, medical and domestic appliances. Synthetic Calcium Carbonate Globally, almost 10 million tons of precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) is produced every year for use in a wide range of end use applications. About 70% of the total is consumed by the paper industry for the filling and coating of paper. Large amounts of PCC are also used in the filling of polymers, as a pigment in paint, and as a thixotrope in sealant and plastisol formulations. In addition, PCC with sufficient purity can be used for food and pharmaceutical applications. Through years of laboratory and pilot scale effort, CalciTech has perfected a unique and patented process that allows microscopic calcium carbonate particles to be synthesized with unprecedented purity and consistency. Due to the fundamentally different nature of the CalciTech calcium carbonate process and product from existing PCC materials, the company has dubbed the new material “Synthetic Calcium Carbonate” or “SCC.” This superior form of synthesized calcium carbonate can readily be produced from inferior, by-product and waste raw materials. Virtually any material that contains significant amounts of calcium oxide and/or calcium hydroxide can be used as a raw material for the manufacture of SCC by the CalciTech process. The core of the CalciTech SCC process involves the use of a proprietary chemical agent (known as a “promoter”) that greatly increases the solubility of calcium oxide and/or calcium hydroxide (and ONLY these materials) in water. Over the past years, enormous quantities of acetylene gas were generated in Europe for use as a monomer in the production of various polymers. Although acetylene has now been replaced by petrochemical derived monomers, large landfills of carbide lime are still prevalent throughout Europe. Such sites offer abundant raw materials for future SCC production plants. In Asia, explosive growth in PVC manufacturing has taken place in recent years. Most of this new PVC production capacity is based on the reaction of acetylene with hydrogen chloride to form vinyl chloride monomer. As a result, China alone is currently producing in excess of 7 mln tpa of carbide lime waste. This waste is presently used as a low cost additive in building materials or dumped into landfills. However, the Chinese Environmental Protection Administration is now requiring new PVC plants to recycle or treat the carbide lime waste. In a fortunate coincidence, most PVC products are filled with up to 40% by weight of ground natural and/or precipitated calcium carbonate. Therefore, the production of SCC via the CalciTech process in Asia represents a unique opportunity to manufacture a critical component of the PVC polymer formulation out of the very waste that is generated in the production of the PVC resin. Studies of SCC in filled polymer systems have shown it to be excellent mineral filler that imparts outstanding polymer properties while at the same time offering significant polymer processing benefits. As tighter environmental regulations are imposed on the polymer and paper industries throughout the world, the ability of CalciTech’s unique SCC process to turn mineral-based industrial wastes into extremely useful and high purity end products will become increasingly valuable to these (and other) industries.