Commonly known as gypsum, calcium sulphate finds widespread applications in various industrial and commercial sectors owing to its superlative physiochemical characteristics. It is increasingly being used for the production of construction materials, synthetic polymers, and coatings for industrial and manufacturing purposes. As a result, the growing demand for construction materials is anticipated to create a strong demand for calcium sulphate.
The growing use of calcium sulphate in its various forms including anhydrous or hydrated calcium sulphate, as desiccants, additives, excipients, and thickening agents are key to the growth of the producers for the foreseeable future. Moreover, the easy availability of calcium sulphate and cost effective synthetic manufacturing process, helps producers and suppliers in meeting the strong demand from construction, infrastructure, and medical fields.
Applications in the Food Industry Boosts the Adoption of Hydrated Calcium Sulphate
While calcium sulphate has witnessed widespread use in construction and coatings industry, the hydrated variant of calcium sulphate is also finding use in the vast food and beverage industry as a safe and edible filler or coating is expected to boost the use of hydrated calcium sulphate, far ahead of anhydrous variants. The material is also being used for the production of pigments, paper and PoP.
Calcium sulphate is especially popular in food products such as bread, flour, vegetables, juices, and more, where they are used in small quantities as a calcium supplement. Moreover, the material is also essential to the process of manufacturing beer, where it is used as a buffering agent. With the growing scarcity of clean fresh water for human use, the demand for calcium sulphate to use for water treatment purposes is anticipated to grow rapidly in the near future, particularly in developing countries.
Regulatory Changes Result in Significant Restrictions for Calcium Sulphate Use
Implementation of increasingly strict regulatory policies and standards by bodies such as the Environment Protection Agency have generated positive interest towards the development and use of alternatives such as calcium chloride and aluminum sulphate. Moreover, improvements in efficiency, convenience, and the high versatility in the functionalities of these alternatives in construction and healthcare industries are adversely affecting the sales of calcium sulphate around the world.
Calcium sulphate also traditionally played a major role in agriculture for the improvements in the yield, as a widely used additive to enrich topsoil. However, changes in regulations regarding inorganic fertilizers have restricted the use of the material for this purpose. In addition, the reuse and recycling of calcium sulphate materials has grown in popularity, owing to reduced need for fresh production, consequently reducing overall demand in the calcium sulphate market.
On the other hand, the European Food Safety Authority has relaxed regulations on the use of calcium sulphate. It has retracted the requirement of previously mandatory safety advice labeling on food supplements that contained calcium sulphate, if they meet the requisite quality and purity standards set by the body.
This development comes after extensive animal studies by the EFSA, and is anticipated to significantly encourage the use of calcium sulphate as a calcium supplement by the food and beverage industry within Europe, as other forms of calcium still have a number of safety regulations applied against them.
Innovations in Applications Create New Avenues for Manufacturers
With the growing number of alternatives to calcium sulphate, manufacturers are focusing their efforts towards the development of new calcium sulphate compounds and applications to sustain the financial feasibility of the material. Innovations in construction and health care fields have dominated these innovations in recent times.
For example, number of calcium sulphate manufacturers including the USG Corporation and Honeywell are increasingly emphasizing on making investments in developing low cost, ecofriendly boards of gypsum calcium sulphate for use in the construction industry.
Recently researchers also came up with a new injectable compound of cement based in a calcium sulphate hemihydrate matrix, which was developed for the strengthening and restoration of damaged vertebrae.
Israel based researchers have also developed BondBone, a biphasic calcium sulphate compound that has shown promise as a grafting material during tooth extraction processes, which reduces volume loss of the bone, and eliminates the need for secondary reconstructive surgeries, with a 100 per cent success rate.
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