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Director of Marketing Communications Julie Brown, left, and Peter McKenzie, Nevada mines manager, discuss operations at EP Minerals’ Colado Mine near Lovelock. Food Grade Kieselguhr
LOVELOCK -- EP Minerals unlocks the unique properties of diatomaceous earth to develop a range of products that are used every day throughout the world.
EP Minerals used to be known as the Eagle Picher Company. Many people who have been around northern Nevada for a few years still refer to it as Eagle Picher but, make no mistake, EP Minerals is the name today.
Julie Brown, director of EP Minerals’ marketing communications, described how Eagle Picher started in 1945 when the company acquired the Clark diatomaceous earth or DE mine and plant outside of Reno.
In 1959, the Colado facility in Lovelock was commissioned and has become the world’s largest producer of DE. Brown said that about five years ago, the Eagle Picher Company divested itself of everything except the industrial minerals portion of the business and became the EP Minerals of today.
Brown, said, “In Nevada, we have three operations. The Clark facility is located at USA Parkway outside of the Reno/Sparks area. The Fernley operations are about 10 miles east of Fernley and the Colado Mine is located north of Lovelock.”
EP acquired the Moltan Company in early 2013 which brought mines and processing sites in Fernley as well as a montmorillonite clay project in Middleton, Tennessee.
In addition to DE, EP Minerals produces perlite from its mines in Nevada and processes it at the Lovelock plant. The perlite is heated until it expands or blows up like popcorn. Thus, the Fallon operation was named the Popcorn Mine. The expander produces perlite that is especially well suited for use in the filtration and various construction materials.
The skeletons of these diatoms are made of amorphous silicon dioxide and are shaped like a cylinder with very high pore volume and mechanical strength.
Diatomaceous earth or DE is an accumulation of the skeltons of diatoms. Diatoms are a type of algae that make up the phytoplankton in bodies of water. The skeletons of these diatoms are made of silicon dioxide and are shaped like a cylinder with very high pore volume and mechanical strength.
Peter McKenzie, Nevada mines manager for EP Minerals said, “Diatoms build their skeletons out of silica that they absorb from the water. When they die, they sink to the bottom of the lake and form a deposit of diatoms, accumulating in layers at the rate of the thickness of one fingernail per year.”
Approximately 10 million years ago, northwestern Nevada and southern Oregon was inundated by a freshwater lake. At the same time, volcanic eruptions were occurring in the region. The volcanic material provided an abundance of silica in the lake water which allowed freshwater diatoms to flourish. Up to 98 percent of the diatoms in the lake were the freshwater species Melosira Granulata.
At the Horseshoe Basin Pit, one can see the thick deposit of pure white DE. The gray layers were formed by the ash from various volcanic eruptions like the one at Mount St. Helens in 1980. A layer of columnar basalt lies near the top of the DE deposit.
“These are very pure deposits because there was so much volcanic activity going on at the time,” McKenzie said.
Diatoms exist today and provide oxygen to the atmosphere. In his paper, “Diatoms, The Tree of Life Web Project” (2010), David G. Mann hypothesizes that diatoms in oceans, rivers, lakes and marshes across the world today liberate enough oxygen during photosynthesis to give us every fifth breath.
Julie Brown checks the tag on bulk super sacs of natural, unprocessed product that are waiting to be shipped to the customer for use in their product. Some super sacs can hold up to two thousand pounds of product.
Many of EP’s products are labeled as “Celatom” with names like Celatom Brights or have the prefix “cela-, such as CelaBrew.
“Celatom is our brand for our DE," Brown said. "That comes from back in the day when the Clark Mine was called the Celatom Mine.”
Because DE is made of nearly pure silicon dioxide, it does not react chemically with other substances and it has a bright white color. The low density and the high porosity of the diatomite cell structure cause DE to be surprisingly light weight. The cylindrical shape of the cells makes it a very durable material.
These properties make DE ideal for use as filter aids, functional additives, and absorbents. Liquids can flow through the material but the open structure can either capture solids to be removed or hold compounds to be delivered for a slow release.
McKenzie said, “If we’re filtering something, we don’t add to what’s being filtered. It just runs through our material and leaves stuff behind. An important property of DE is that it doesn’t really react to things.”
One of the most prominent uses of DE is as a filter aid to filter wine, beer, juice, oil and water. EP has developed a way to compost the used DE filtration material, known as “spent cake” in the wine and beer industries, reducing the amount of product that is sent to landfill.
EP Minerals also produces a product called NXT that removes arsenic from water. CelaPoolTM, Celatom SP, and CelaPerl are filter aids for swimming pools.
The extraordinary ability of DE to absorb liquids of any kind make it highly useful to clean up spills ranging from the kitchen floor to large scale industrial spills, including hazardous materials.
The brightness and texture allow DE to be used in construction materials such as paint pigment extenders and flattening agents as well as in stucco and other coatings.
Brown described how the new AgReady fertilizer carrier works. “Companies like Dow will take it and mix it with their fertilizer blending agents. Because of its properties, they’ll put DE in with the nutrients and stabilizers they are using as their soil fertilizer product. It holds the moisture, prevents clumping, and provides for even distribution of the fertilizer blends to prevent nitrogen runoff into streams and lakes. The DE and fertilizer blend allow the nitrogen to be held at the root level instead of just getting washed off with heavy rains,” she said.
DEsect is an organic, non-chemical insecticide for use on crops, grain storage, food processing areas, and the home or garden. It controls insects physically rather than chemically so it provides an alternative to the chemical insecticides. It is registered with the EPA as an insecticide that meets the U.S. requirements for use in organic farms and food processing facilities.
These are just examples of EP’s product line. There are many variations of these and other products designed to meet specific needs.
Brown went on to say that, “The whole role of our R&D Team is to come up with new products. DE, especially, has been used in the same industries in the same way for so many years and we are developing new ways to use our products, developing new ores and new products that are very narrow in their specs because of their properties to be used for specific things. Whether that’s new products for our wine and beer customers or new markets that we’re trying to branch into like agriculture.”
“We have a very large bucket on that excavator because our ore is so light weight and easy to dig," said Peter McKenzie, Nevada mines manager. "Our trucks have expanded beds as well so that we’re more efficient hauling this lightweight material.”
McKenzie oversees the mining in Nevada and the transportation from the mines to the various plants. The land ownership in the area of the Colado Mine is on what is known as a railroad checkerboard land pattern where every other square mile is privately or publicly owned land.
“So we have part of it that we own, part of it that we don’t own on private land. Part of it on public land is our claims, part of it is not our claims, and we have agreements with the owners. So it is a very complex land position and a very large land position,” said McKenzie.
McKenzie said that the ore is full of water. “There is 50 percent water in the ore which is extremely wet. It all has to be completely dried out before it is made into product. So we mine it in the summer and lay it out in the hot sun to get the water to evaporate as much as possible. Our stockpile process is a really important part of what we do. It is a very unusual process. For mining, you would normally not do anything like that. It is a very unusual ore. Most ores are 3 percent moisture and we are 50 percent,” said McKenzie.
Yet, no dewatering is necessary at the Colado mine. “We have to haul what little water we need from Lovelock. We drilled a couple thousand feet out here and have not found any water even though the ore is 50 percent water. Very weird stuff,” said McKenzie.
Some parts of the deposit are whiter than others or have a slightly different texture. McKenzie said that the characteristics, such as soluble metals, brightness, density, or flow rates, are recorded so that each part of the deposit can be used to make a specific product.
Brown said, “The light weight of our material is a big deal in so many industries where we have a competitive advantage. For example, we’re working with kitty litter blenders who have been making the lightweight kitty litter because it is incredibly absorbent but it is super lightweight.”
McKenzie said, “We are also getting into more sophisticated specialty products that have some specs that are really difficult to meet. So we need to do some more definition drilling to get more detailed information about what we have so we can get specialty ores out to meet the specs for some of these products.”
EP does much of their own testing in house. McKenzie said, “Some of the stuff we measure nobody else measures. So we have our own lab testing equip that we made to test for the characteristics.”
This year EP Minerals received the Mine Operators Safety award from the Nevada Mining Association in the Non-Metal Mining category for the Colado Mine, the Clark Mine, and Fernley Operations.
“The Lovelock plant is the largest DE plant in the world but also has a perlite expander so it is really two plants," McKenzie said. "The plant in Clark makes absorbents and powders which are flash dried so they make some specialty products. Fernley makes all types of absorbents.”
“We are able to pack 16,000 bags a day of DE out of the Lovelock plant," Brown said. "So that’s 400 pallets of product that we get out of here.”
Trucks bring the DE to the plant from the mine and dump it into a grizzly, a steel grid used to sort out the oversize rocks and debris before it enters the processing system. Then, based on the kind of ore it is or the product that this particular load of ore is destined to become will determine where it goes in the facility. From the grizzly, it is placed onto a conveyor belt that will take it to the specific silo for the type of processing needed for that product.
Brown explained that ore for many of the natural products is simply crushed and ground and put in bags.
“Our DEsect insecticide product and animal feed products fall into that category,” she said.
The Colado Plant also has three kilns that are used to heat the material to create a calcined product. Brown said, “From the kiln, the product drops into the bagging area where it is prepared for either the little sacks, super sacks that can be up to two thousand pounds of product, or to be loaded onto a truck or rail car, depending on the product.”
Quality control testing as the minerals go through the different types of processing is done at all the plants to ensure that all of the specifications are met.
“Every year we survey of all our customers and distributors about why they continue to buy from us," Brown said. "Quality is above all. They said because we could consistently meet their specifications. That was just huge to them. Part of that is due to our testing procedures and how committed we are to consistently producing the highest quality products at all of our plants.”
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Director of Marketing Communications Julie Brown, left, and Peter McKenzie, Nevada mines manager, discuss operations at EP Minerals’ Colado Mine near Lovelock.
The skeletons of these diatoms are made of amorphous silicon dioxide and are shaped like a cylinder with very high pore volume and mechanical strength.
“We have a very large bucket on that excavator because our ore is so light weight and easy to dig," said Peter McKenzie, Nevada mines manager. "Our trucks have expanded beds as well so that we’re more efficient hauling this lightweight material.”
Julie Brown checks the tag on bulk super sacs of natural, unprocessed product that are waiting to be shipped to the customer for use in their product. Some super sacs can hold up to two thousand pounds of product.
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