Editorial for Special Issue 'Industrial Minerals'

Abstract

Industrial minerals play an important role in keeping our society running, as they are used in a wide range of industrial and domestic applications. Harben and Bates [1] define the industrial minerals as all those materials that man takes out of the Earth’s crust, except for fuels, metallic ores, water, and gemstones. A commonly used synonym for industrial minerals is non-metallic minerals, and a more precise one is industrial minerals and rocks. Industrial minerals include minerals and rocks that, depending on their physical and chemical properties, are used, directly or with treatment, in the manufacturing of products, such as ceramics, glass, cement, biomaterials, and geopolymers, and even in the recycling of wastes. This definition also includes construction materials and waste products of several bulk industrial processes [2]. Compared with ore minerals, industrial minerals are cheap, as they are generally abundant, widely distributed on the Earth’s surface, and are often simple to process.