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BARITE CRYSTALS FOR SALE
What Is Barite?
Barite is the mineralogic name for barium sulfate, and has a rather high specific gravity due to its barium content. It is because of this high specific gravity that barite has so many industrial and manufacturing uses that typically increase a product’s weight. At 4.5, barite has one of the highest specific gravities among non-metallic minerals. Barite can appear in many different colors, often somewhere between white, yellow, brown, and colorless, though occasionally specimens in blues, greens, and reds have been found. Most often, barite forms as either crested aggregates (cockscomb) or rosette aggregates (desert rose) in crystal clusters.
A very gemmy, bladed barite crystal cluster from the Meikle Mine in Elko County, Nevada
Where Is Barite Found?
The overwhelming majority of the global supply of barite is from mines in China and India, but a good portion is also extracted within the United States. Barite occurs as a void-filling crystal in limestone and other sedimentary rocks or as a concretion in sandstone. By nature, barite is an efficient space-filling mineral that is often a part of gangue (less valuable or refuse material) when in association with many metallic ores that it forms around, including: antimony, copper, manganese, and silver.
What Is Barite Used For?
Because barite is the main ore for barium, it has a high demand, and other substitute minerals often fall short in performance as well as in price. Barite’s high specific gravity and ability to block x-ray and gamma-rays are useful for many applications in the industrial and medical fields. Its most common use is in the petroleum industry, where it is ground into a fine powder and made into drilling mud that cools drill heads and floats material to the surface in oil wells. This use and the demand for oil has led to a massive increase in barite mining. Ground barite is also used to weight mud flaps on trucks, weight playing cards, line x-ray safe walls, and to coat the colon or esophagus when performing medical scans.