Specialty garnet applications

Water Filtration

Garnet is widely used in industrial water filtration due to its uniform chemical and physical properties, providing excellent backwash stability and enabling shallower support layers for reduced construction costs.

In multi-media filters, performance relies on a decreasing grain size from top to bottom, where larger top grains trap heavy solids and smaller bottom grains provide final polishing for longer filter runs and higher filtration rates. With its high specific gravity and fine particle size, GMA garnet creates the ideal, highly stable bottom layer for advanced water and wastewater treatment systems.

Rubber Filler

Garnet as a filler in rubber can increase the weight and viscosity of rubber, as well as its physical strength and vibration dampening properties.

A micro-powder derived from Garnet minerals is added as an inorganic filler to rubber. Its unique chemical profile, characterized by wear resistance and chemical inertness, means that garnet powder as a rubber additive brings much needed elasticity and resilience to rubber products.

Garnet-reinforced rubber also has more performant tensile strength and is more resistant to tearing when compared to rubber reinforced with other additives, such as calcium carbonate.

Anti-Slip and Anti-Skid Surfaces

Garnet is used as a highly effective anti-slip or anti-skid additive in coatings and paints, increasing the level of surface traction in these products.

Road Pavement Surfacing

As an anti-skid/anti-slip additive, garnet adds the surface tension needed to improve friction and increase the safety surfaces, while also helping to create an extremely durable surface. Garnet serves as an anti-slip additive for a wide range of road pavement surfaces, including:

• Bus, cycle, transit and fire lanes
• School and pedestrian crossings
• Taxi & bus stops and pickup areas
• Carparks

Anti-slip surface treatments created with garnet additives can also help with creating clear and colourful demarcations and enhance the fuel and oil-resistance of a road surface.

Commercial and Industrial Flooring

Garnet can also be used in commercial and industrial flooring scenarios, serving as a broadcast aggregate that adds the requisite surface tension to create a safe and slip-free surface.

After rolling out a floor coating, contractors can broadcast garnet aggregate into the coating, then back roll the floor to embed the garnet in the flooring.

Bonded and Coated Abrasives

Garnet’s natural properties makes it one the most efficient abrasives. It can be found in a multitude of abrasive products, including rolls, belts, brushes, and wheels.

Garnet bonded and coated abrasives are used in the conditioning of metal, wood and synthetic surfaces from sanding and finishing to grinding and dimensioning.

• Coarser garnet grains are particularly effective for removing multiple, heavy paint layers, as well as varnish and enamel from rough surfaces.
• Medium-grade garnet is used most commonly in the grinding of softer metals or in stripping wood. These grains also work well in preparing slip-resistant surfaces and painted surfaces.
• Finally, fine-grade garnet serves as a great finishing agent, helping to detail products and remove slight demarcations.

Cosmetics and exfoliants

Garnet’s gently abrasive and revitalising properties make it an ideal exfoliant in cosmetic use cases.

Garnet’s composition of iron, silica and aluminium make it an ideal exfoliant in cosmetic use cases.It has gently abrasive and revitalising properties that add value to cosmetic products and exfoliators.This mineral can be ground into an ideal size that is fine enough for cosmetic applications without being so fine that it is respirable, eliminating the risk of silica inhalation.