As the world's largest producer and consumer of paper products, China has limited the source of paper raw materials due to the "ban on waste". In addition, China is short of wood, domestic raw pulp capacity is insufficient, and the cost of imported raw pulp is relatively high. Therefore, many paper enterprises try to replace paper with some mining materials to solve the bottleneck in the paper making process. The use of wollastonite in the paper industry can solve a large part of the problem.

1、 What are the advantages of wollastonite in paper industry

Wollastonite is a naturally produced chained calcium metasilicate mineral. Pure wollastonite is bright white, and when mixed with other impurities, it is grayish brown. The naturally occurring wollastonite is usually needle shaped, radial shaped, fibrous or tabular. The Mohs hardness is 4.5 ～ 5.5, the density is 2.75 ～ 3.10g/cm3, and the melting point is 1540 ℃. Grinding wollastonite into ultra-fine powder is called "mineral fiber". 1250 mesh wollastonite is used as filling agent in papermaking, which can replace 25%~35% wood pulp. The modified wollastonite can significantly reduce pulp consumption. To a large extent, it can save the amount of plant fiber added, indirectly reduce the deforestation and utilization of forest resources, reduce production costs, and maintain ecological balance.

2、 Application and Development Trend of Wollastonite in Papermaking

Wollastonite is very rich in savings in China, and its price is relatively cheap. At present, wollastonite is used to replace plant pulp for paper making. The realization of ore paper making has been promoted in Yunnan, Sichuan, Shandong and other places. With the addition of raw pulp of ultra-fine wollastonite powder, the whiteness of the paper is high, and it has good chemical stability and thermal stability. In practical application, it can play a role in high flame retardancy, high resistance and low dielectric constant, and promote its heat resistance and corrosion resistance.

Milled wollastonite into ultra-fine powder instead of plant pulp to realize ore papermaking in Yunnan, which has produced thousands of tons of high-quality paper. At present, after this major technological innovation is promoted to Shaanxi, Sichuan, Shandong and other places, more paper mills can replace part of the wood with ore when making paper.

Wollastonite has a broad application prospect in the current development of paper industry and is the main trend of the future development of this industry. At the same time, wollastonite reserves in China are very rich, and the price is relatively low, but the overall application level is not high, and further scientific research is needed to explore its application technology and methods. In addition, the application of wollastonite in the paper industry has special properties that cannot be replaced by traditional fillers. For example, the needle like structure is convenient for fiber interlacing, which is conducive to the formation of higher physical strength. In the application of fibrous wollastonite, the whiteness of the paper is high, and it has superior chemical stability and thermal stability. In the actual application process, it can play its characteristics of high flame retardancy, high resistance and low dielectric constant to promote its heat resistance and corrosion resistance.

In addition, wollastonite has good adsorption, which is conducive to reducing suspended solids in water and effectively reducing the cost of white water treatment. The application in the paper industry shows a good development trend and fully improves the production quality of the paper industry.