Calcite is a carbonate mineral and the most stable polymorph of calcium carbonate.
Calcite is the primary mineral in metamorphic marble. It also occurs as a vein mineral in deposits from hot springs, and it occurs in caverns as stalactites and stalagmites.
Calcite powder is heavy mass calcium carbonate, also be called “heavy calcium” for short. Calcite powder usually used as filler, widely for artificial floor tiles, packing, and rubber, and plastic, and paper, and paint, and paint, and ink, and cable, and building supplies, and food, and medicine, and textile, and feed, and toothpaste such as daily chemical industry, for fill agent up to increase products volume, reduce production cost.
The main use of Calcite powder is in the construction industry, either as a building material or limestone aggregate for road building or as an ingredient of cement or as the starting material for the preparation of builder's lime by burning in a kiln. However, due to weathering mainly caused by acid rain, Calcite powder is no longer used for building purposes on its own, and only as a raw/primary substance for building materials.
Calcite powder is also used in the purification of iron from iron ore in a blast furnace. The carbonate is calcined in situ to give calcium oxide, which forms a slag with various impurities present, and separates from the purified iron.
Calcite powder is widely used as an extender in paints, in particular matte emulsion paint where typically 30% by weight of the paint is either chalk or marble. It is also popular filler in plastics.
Calcite powder is used as filler in paper because they are cheaper than wood fiber. Printing and writing paper can contain 10–20% calcite powder.
In the oil industry, calcite powder is added to drilling fluids as a formation-bridging and filter cake-sealing agent; it is also a weighting material which increases the density of drilling fluids to control the downhole pressure. Calcium carbonate is added to swimming pools, as a pH corrector for maintaining alkalinity and offsetting the acidic properties of the disinfectant agent.
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