Glass Polishing Powder: Industrial And Household Use
Why do you need glass polishing powder? You need it for polishing glass surfaces and remove scratch marks. Households can use this powder to remove scratch marks form glass tops of furniture, windscreen of car etc. However, industries have a more important use of this powder. The optical glass industry is almost entirely dependent upon this material. Since the optical glass industry demands the highest level of purity and precision, the glass polishing powder is one of the most important chemicals in industrial circles.
Usage Of Glass Polishing Powder
Glass polishing powder is used industrially as well as in households. Since the use of glass polishing powder is extensive in optical industry, it is a good idea to start with this industry.
Industrial use
The use of powders in optical glass components manufacturing is for grinding and polishing. These powders contain nanoparticles of cerium oxide which is abrasive in nature. This chemical is used as pellets and is manufactured by combining cerium oxide abrasive with an organic binder. In the optical glass industry cerium oxide of 99 % purity is used. The average size of these particles is of the order of 300 nm having high specific surface area.
Types Of Optical Glass
There are various types of optical glass that are polished by glass polishing powder.
Borosilicate
Fused Silica
Polysilicon
Pyrex
Quartz
Zerodur
These glasses are used in the following applications –
Lithography Cylinder
Precision Mirror
Optical Flats
Sensors
Micro Electro Mechanical System
Optical Window
Powders for glass polishing are used in all of these applications since they demand high precision. It is possible to have high grade polishing through this powder.
Household Requirement of Powders For Glass Polishing
Although the household requirement of glass polishing pales in comparison to industrial requirement, there are quite a few of them. Household glass surfaces that are used for decorative purposes as well automobile windscreens are one of the most often used surfaces for polishing. When decorative surfaces develop scratches they become ugly and lose their decorative value.
To remove these scratches one can use Powders For Glass Polishing. However, polishing powders for household use need not be of such high purity as industrial ones. In industrial usage you need about 99% purity, but for household purposes you can do with less than that. Nevertheless, such purity level is sufficient to restore the decorative value of household material. They are also sufficient for restoring the value of car windshields.
Contents of polishing powders
The main component of these polishing powders is nanoparticles of cerium oxide. Cerium is the most abundant rare earth element. It can be found in several minerals such as synchysite, bastnasite, sallanite, hydroxylbastnasite, monazite, rhabdophane, zircon etc. It is a malleable element that can oxidize at room temperature. However, this is also highly flammable and toxic.
However, these powders don’t just contain cerium oxide nanoparticles. In fact, using these nanoparticles alone is dangerous. It also contains lanthanum oxide and praseodymium oxide along with trace amounts of silicon oxide, aluminium oxide and calcium oxide.