Barite is an important barium-containing mineral, renowned for its high density and stable chemical and thermal properties. At present, its main application fields are concentrated in the petroleum industry and the chemical industry. In the petroleum industry, it is widely used as a mud weighting agent for oil and gas drilling. In the chemical industry, it serves as the fundamental raw material for manufacturing a series of barium-containing chemical products such as barium carbonate, barium sulfate, barium oxide, and zinc barium white (lithopone). In addition, as a functional filler, barite can also increase the thickness and strength of the paint film, and enhance the hardness, wear resistance and aging resistance of rubber and plastic products.
However, barite powder, as an inorganic mineral raw material, has significant differences in surface properties from organic polymer materials, resulting in poor compatibility and insufficient affinity between the two. This bottleneck makes it difficult to be uniformly dispersed in the field of polymer materials, which not only affects the mechanical properties of composite materials but also limits the exertion of their excellent inorganic characteristics. Therefore, by carrying out surface modification treatment on barite powder and selecting appropriate modifiers to act on its surface, it has become the key to improving its application performance and expanding its application range.
To achieve effective surface modification, high-quality ultrafine powder is a fundamental prerequisite. At present, the ultrafine powder mill produced by Shanghai Cronus Co., Ltd. can well meet this processing demand. This equipment can finely process barite powder to any fineness between 250 mesh and 3500 mesh according to specific process requirements. Its stability and flexibility provide sufficient raw material guarantee for subsequent modification treatment. It has won the recognition and trust of many micro-powder production enterprises in the industry.
Although powder surface modification technology has gradually developed in China since the 1980s, and domestic research on the modification of non-metallic minerals such as kaolin and calcium carbonate has been relatively in-depth, targeted research and application development of barite are still relatively lagging behind. In the face of the increasingly high demands of modern industry for mineral fillers in terms of purity, whiteness and particle size, the deep processing of barite – including ultrafine grinding, purification and surface modification – is not only an inevitable way to increase its added value, but also meets the extensive demands of domestic and international markets.
With the continuous development of science and technology, more performance potential of barite remains to be revealed. Strengthening the research on its surface modification and application development will surely promote this important mineral to play a key role in more industrial fields and create greater economic benefits.
