Incredible Minerals Today

January has come in with a bang this year! Flooding, record rain & snow. Freezing temperatures and gray days. Yoohoo - Mr. Sun - where are you? Makes us all wish for a nice hot day by a beautiful, crystal clear & clean swimming pool. Right? But how does a pool get that way?

The most experienced brewers in the world today use diatomaceous earth (DE) filter systems. Why? It's all about art. And personality. Does that make sense? Well, if you're a brewmaster, it certainly does.

At EP Minerals, we’re not like any other company. We’re different. And we think that’s a very good thing.

What exactly do we mean by that? We’re different in how we treat our customers, different in how we work with each other and our suppliers, and different in what we do and how we do it. We not only believe in being a good company to work for and a good corporate citizen in the communities where we live and operate, but we also believe in being a good environmental steward in how we conduct our business.

Every day, we commit to our mission: to provide our customers with the highest quality industrial minerals and deliver them with amazing customer service and technical expertise.

In an average day, you probably come in contact with over 100 products that have been manufactured or processed from industrial minerals. Industrial minerals are defined as non-metallic minerals produced from natural sources. Here at EP Minerals, we mine and manufacture diatomaceous earth (DE), perlite, and clay. These incredibly high-quality minerals are used in an extremely broad range of applications in everyday life - both industrial and domestic. Without these minerals, a vast range of products would simply not exist. Surprised?

Today's post is from Joseph A. Main, the assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health

As the saying goes, “If it isn’t grown, it must be mined.” And each day, more than 366,000 men and women in America go to work extracting ore from the ground at nearly 13,600 surface and underground mining operations.

The materials are as diverse as they are numerous, and each one plays a critical role in the quality of our lives.

Cork the wine! What did the pilgrims really drink on Thanksgiving?

Science and technology are playing an ever increasing role in new product innovation in the world of industrial minerals today. Here at EP Minerals, we are committed to innovating, developing and manufacturing revolutionary new products from our diatomaceous earth (DE), perlite, clay and cellulose blends.

Diatomaceous earth is truly incredible. Every day we find a new use or application for our DE. This week, UC Riverside engineering professors announced that they're using DE as a source of silica for electric car battery anodes. Hello, Elon Musk and Mr. Panasonic!

Most people who believe in the electric car revolution would agree with this statement: “Batteries that power electric vehicles are expensive and need to be frequently charged, which causes anxiety for consumers and negatively impacts the sale of these vehicles. To improve the adoption of electric vehicles, we need much better batteries.”

 Those are the words of Mihri Ozkan, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California – Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering. He and his colleague Cengiz Ozkan, a professor of mechanical engineering at UCR, have recently published a paper in the journal Scientific Reports entitled “Carbon-Coated, Diatomite-Derived Nanosilicon as a High Rate Capable Li-ion Battery Anode.”  Mihri Ozkan says, “We believe diatomaceous earth, which is abundant and inexpensive, could be another sustainable source of silicon for battery anodes.”

 Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite

183 years ago today, the famous chemist Alfred Nobel was born in Sweden. You probably know his name because of the Nobel Prize, the highly respected award that is given in the fields of peace, literature, chemistry, economics, physics and medicine. But Nobel is also well-known for something else – dynamite. The material that Nobel mixed with nitroglycerin to form dynamite was diatomaceous earth!