What is Barite?

• Chemistry: BaSO₄, Barium Sulfate
• Class: Sulfates
• Group: Barite
• Uses: ore of barium, in heavy muds in oil-well drilling, to increase brilliance in glass-making industry, as filler for paper, cosmetics, textiles, linoleum, rubber goods, paints.
• Specimens
Barite, barites, or heavy spar, a white, yellow, blue, red, or colorless mineral. It is a sulfate of barium, BaSO₄, found in nature as tabular crystals or in granular or massive form and has a high specific gravity. The mineral is widely distributed throughout the world. It often occurs in veins with lead and zinc minerals. It is insoluble in water, and this property is made use of in testing for the sulfate radical. It is practically insoluble under ordinary conditions in all the usual chemical reagents. Barite is used as a commercial source of barium and many of its compounds. Ground barite is used as filler in the manufacture of linoleum, oilcloth, paper and textile manufacturing, rubber, and plastics. Finely ground barite is used to make a thixotropic mud for sealing oil wells during drilling. Prime white, a bleached barite, is used as a pigment in white paint but is not as satisfactory as blanc fixe, a chemically precipitated barium sulfate, or lithopone, a mixture of barium sulfate, zinc sulfide, and zinc oxide. Barites is a material with environmental protecting function, it has a lot of advantages, such as a strong inertia, good stability, acid and alkali proof, moderate rigidity, high specific gravity, high whiteness, absorb in harmful radial. So, it is widely used in the fields of all kinds of dope, middle and high-grade paint, engineering plastic, medicine compounding chemical industry, rubber, paper-making, pottery, cosmetic etc. Barite is a common mineral and makes very attractive specimens. It often is an accessory mineral to other minerals and can make a nice backdrop to brightly colored crystals. At times bladed or tabular crystals of Barite form a concentric pattern of increasingly larger crystals outward. This has the appearance of a flower and when colored red by iron stains, these formations are called "Desert Roses". Because Barite is so common, it can be confused for other minerals. Celestite (SrSO₄) has the same structure as barite and forms very similar crystals. The two are indistinguishable by ordinary methods, but a flame test can distinguish them. By scrapping the dust of the crystals into a gas flame the color of the flame will confirm the identity of the crystal. If the flame is a pale green it is barite, but if the flame is red it is celestite. The flame test works because the elements barium (Ba) and strontium (Sr) react in the flame and produce those colors.

Barite Geology [BaSO₄]

A dense sulfate mineral that can occur in a variety of rocks, including limestone and sandstone, and is commonly used to add weight to drilling mud. Barite is of significance to petrophysicists because excess barite can require a correction factor in some well log measurements.