Or if it's round and smooth, does it mean it's been processed?
A quartz heater does not create heat. It uses electricity and resistance heating and the quartz holds the heat. In some research I have found that you can have a duraflame or gas quartz heater. You can also have a ceramic heater similar to the quartz. Quartz infrared heaters are driven by an electrical element--usually a tungsten wire--inside of a clear tube made out of quartz crystal. A powerful electric current flows into the wire, heating it up. The quartz crystal traps the heat inside, getting the element even hotter. As the wire gets hotter, it begins to emit a large amount of infrared light
Yes, it's the same quartz as the crystal quartz, aka fused silica, aka beach sand. It's an electrical insulator, it doesn't burn (because it's already oxidized silicon) or melt at those temperatures, and it is a relatively good reflector of infrared radiation (which is where your heat is coming from in a device with an electrical heating coil. u
