Quartz deposit purity in central China ‘highly similar’ to US Spruce Pine: study

Geologists say they have identified a new deposit in central China that can produce high-purity quartz

comparable to the quality produced at a critical world-leading mine in the United States.

The high-purity quartz from the Chinese deposit is described as having “highly similar” properties to the resources produced at North Carolina’s Spruce Pine, which is crucial to the global production of solar panels and semiconductors.

In the US, there is a growing call from the industry to use high-purity quartz as a weapon against China’s rare earth export ban.

Chinese researchers say the newly explored deposit near Shiyan in China’s central Hubei province is the latest in a string of quartz discoveries

that could help the country cut its reliance on US imports.

“This discovery of the Xiaohuaguo high-purity quartz deposit provides a new prospective area for the exploration of hydrothermal vein-type high-purity quartz resources in China,” the team wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed Chinese-language journal Earth Science last month.

“Furthermore, the particle size, morphology and residual fluid inclusion characteristics of the purified quartz sand were highly similar to those of Unimin’s IOTA-CG type high-purity quartz sand, demonstrating significant potential for application in high-end technology fields.”

Researchers from the China University of Geosciences, the Wuhan Centre of China Geological Survey and the Hubei Geological Bureau conducted the exploration and purification of the Xiaohuaguo quartz.

While quartz is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth’s continental crust, high-purity quartz is a rare form characterised by silica purity above 99.9 per cent.