Slurry

A slurry is a mixture, which comes in different varieties:

• Metal Slurry can be used in pipe fitting and other welding tasks, as well as slurry based bombs like the BLU-82.

• In farming--perhaps the most well-known use--farm slurry is a mixture composed chiefly of water and animal sewage. It has a distinct odour, noticeable when the substance is carried in tankers, or spread over fields. Misapplication of farm slurry can lead to environmentally damaging emissions of ammonia and other chemicals. See fertilizer.

• A liquid mixture (especially involving water) composed of a mixture of various insoluble matter, such as mud or plaster of paris.

• A special kind of slurry consisting of approximately 1% pulp (wood fiber) and 99% water, used to make paper, is called stock in the papermaking industry.

• Slurry pipelines are a specialized method of material transport that use a watery slurry to move particulates from one location to another.

• In wildland firefighting, slurry is a term used for the fire retardant dropped on a forest fire from an aircraft. "Slurry bomber" is a colloquial term for those aircraft. See aerial firefighting.

• In cooking, particularly in restaurant kitchens, slurry refers to a mixture of a thickening agent (often cornstarch) and water, as a means of dispersing the thickener into hot sauces and soups near the end of the cooking process without forming lumps. Slurry can also refer to the mixture of coffee grounds and water in some kinds of brewing processes, such as a french press.

• Meat slurry is a product made from meats, making them more readily transportable, as well as removing fats, pigmentation and myoglobin.

• In mining, slurry is a sort of liquid waste material that's stored elsewhere.

• In semiconductor fabrication, a chemical slurry is used as an abrasive and corrosive substance in chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP).