Industrial Sand - What is it?

When you hear the word sand, you may think of a child's sand box or an ocean beach. Yet we depend on industrial sand for many uses. Nearly all industries use industrial sand or products made with it, and for the majority of these applications there are no known suitable substitutes. The special properties of industrial sand -- purity, inertness, hardness, resistance to high temperatures, grain size and color -- make it critical to a variety of industrial applications.

Industrial sand, also called silica sand, contains a very high percentage quartz, also known as crystalline silica (a form of silicon dioxide or SiO₂). Since industrial sand deposits must possess a very high percentage of quartz, they are less common than deposits mined for construction sand and gravel. Industrial sand is found in hard rock quartzite formations and in loose unconsolidated beds of silica sand.