How fluorspar is mined

Fluorspar helps steelmakers by making molten slag runny. The name literally means to flow.

stations: 3
things downstream: 8

The short version

Fluorspar is calcium fluoride, mined from veins and pegmatites. The purest grades supply fluoride for hydrofluoric acid. Lower grades go into steel smelting as a flux that thins the slag. China leads world output at about 3 million tonnes a year, per figures for 2010.

Dig out the veins

Fluorite forms late in crystallizing rock, often as veins through limestone with galena and quartz. Miners follow those veins underground or open them up at the surface.
Crush the vein rock

Ore is crushed to free the fluorspar from lead ore, quartz and calcite. The Mohs hardness scale defines fluorite as 4.
Float and grade the concentrate

Froth flotation lifts the fluorite away from the waste minerals. The purest fluorspar goes to chemical plants as the source of fluoride, while less pure grades are sold to steelmakers as a flux, and some becomes glass and enamel.

End of the lineFluorspar Next it goes into ptfe, refrigerant.

Worth repeating

Fluorite gave its name to fluorescence in 1852 and to the element fluorine.
The largest documented single fluorite crystal was a cube 2.12 meters across, weighing about 16 tonnes.
Pliny the Elder described carved fluorite as a precious stone that Romans prized.