Resumen de China's bentonite industry has room to grow
China's bentonite industry has plenty of room for improvement. Although there is little in the way of reliable data illustrating Chinese production of the clay mineral, used principally in drilling muds, cat litter and iron ore pelletisation, the US Geological Survey's (USGS) most recent Mineral Yearbook on clays estimates that China was one of the world's top bentonite producers in 2013.
One of the problems is the low level of sophistication of much of China's manufacturing technology, meaning that versatile and potentially valuable bentonite is used in low value applications, for which companies outside China are able to substitute cheaper minerals such as montmorillonite, diatomite and attapulgite. China's domestic rubber and mineral filler industries alone each consume around 9.1m tpa bentonite, [Zeming Zhang] said.
Bentonite is a clay formed from the alteration of volcanic ash and is composed mainly of smectite minerals, usually montmorillonite. Sodium, or swelling, bentonite, can absorb several times its dry mass in water, and it is this property which underpins the mineral's wide application field ( see box ). The majority of the bentonite found in China is the less commercially useful calcium, or non-swelling material, also referred to as cation-type bentonite.
