The Romans are responsible for developing the art of blowing glass into the shape of a bottle. They quickly discovered that glass bottles are great for storing wine. It does not affect the wine's flavor and it is easy to see the contents inside. Adding manganese, chrome and iron oxides to the glass composition, improves the shelf life of the contents by protecting it from UV exposure.
Glass
Prince Minerals provides a wide range of industrial minerals to the container, float, specialty, and fiberglass markets; including ChromeOx, Iron Pyrites, and Milled Zircon. GlassOx, a manganese based product, acts as an oxidizing agent to control the carbon content of cullet.
In addition, Prince Minerals is the North American agent for the Australian mining group Talison Minerals for sales of spodumene, primarily to the glass industry.
Spodumene is used by the glass industry to increase the nominal furnace capacity (i.e. chemical boost), to increase glass-pack percentage (i.e. increase glass quality) and/or as a powerful boost used to decrease melting temperatures. In glass-ceramics, spodumene is used for its excellent thermal shock properties (i.e. negligible coefficient of thermal expansion).
Minerals for the glass market are utilized to increase factory efficiencies, improve glass transmission, as a flux, chemical boost, and as an oxidizer. In addition, several of our minerals are also used by the glass industry to impart a range of colors to container, float, specialty, and fiberglass products.
| Minerals | Products |
|---|---|
| Dolomite | Alumina Products |
| Feldspar | Brickox® |
| High Purity Silica | Chromox® |
| Ilmenite | Cobalt Aluminate |
| Iron Chromite | GlassOx® |
| Iron Oxides (various colors) | Metallic Oxides |
| Iron Pyrites | PyriteMAX™ |
| Manganese | Rouge |
| Rutile | Silica Sand/Flour |
| Spodumene | ZirCAST™ |
| Zircon |