Fillers are particles added to material (plastics, Composite material, Concrete) to lower the consumption of more expensive binder material or to better some properties of the mixtured material. Worldwide more than 50 million tons of fillers with a total sum of ca. 25 billion Euro for different application areas, such as paper, plastics, rubber, paints and adhesives, are consumed annually. As such, fillers, produced by more than 700 companies, rank among the world's major raw materials and are contained in a variety of goods for daily consumer needs.

Formerly, fillers were used predominantly to cheapen end products. Today, it has been proven that fillers are also able to enhance technical properties of the products. As a result, a number of optimized types of fillers, nano-fillers or surface treated goods have been developed.

Among the 20 most important fillers, calcium carbonate holds the largest market volume and is mainly used in the paper industry and increasingly in the plastics sector. While formerly ground calcium carbonate was used, today precipitated calcium carbonate which is manufactured with the natural mineral is increasingly applied to enhance technical properties of the end product.

[edit] References