Origins of limestone

Sorby H.C. (1879) The structure and origin of limestones. Proc. Geolog. Soc. London 35, 56-95. 

Davis, W.M. (1930) Origin of limestone caverns. Geological Society of America Bulletin 41, 475-628. 

Kirkland, D.W. and Evans, R., 1976. Origin of limestone buttes. Gypsum Plain, Culberson County, Texas. Am. Assoc. Pet. Geol. Bull., 60 2005—2018. 

Many lime plants are able to reduce the impurities in their lime product by careful screening and selecting of stone for burning. Because 9 kg of limestone produce only 5 kg of quicklime, the percentage of impurities in a quicklime is nearly double that in the original stone. Analyses of typical samples of high calcium, magnesian, and dolomitic limestones found in the United States are Hsted in Table 1. 

In an attempt to find out how fast the waste was reacting with limestone, a 3-h backflushing experiment, in which waste was allowed to flow back out of the injection well, yielded some unexpected results. The increase in pH of the neutralized waste could not be fully accounted for by the solution of limestone as determined from the calcium content of the backflushed liquid the additional neutralization apparently resulted from reactions between nitric acid and alcohols and ketones in the original waste induced by increased pressure in the injection zone compared to surface conditions.41... 

Rare earth abundance patterns, particularly of the clay fraction, may also help determine the origin of the terrestrial components. Rare earth patterns in clay fractions of sediments tend to inherit the patterns of the rocks from which they originated [24]. In figure 2 are shown several samples of the rare earth abundance patterns of nitric-acid-insoluble residues from the Danish boundary layer and the limestones above and below. Such patterns along with the other chemical data may indicate the... 

The refined source profiles that best reproduced the coarse fraction are listed in table 7. The calculated profiles of the two crustal components follow those of Mason ( ), though the calcium concentration of 20 in the limestone factor is less than the reported value. The paint pigment profile strongly resembles that calculated for the fine-fraction data. The only major difference is that unlike the fine fraction, the coarse-fraction profile does not associate barium with the paint-pigment factor. The calculated sulfur concentration in the coarse-fraction sulfate factor is much less than that in the fine-fraction and there are sizable concentrations of elements such as aluminum, iron, and lead not found in the fine-fraction profile. The origin of this factor is not clear although as described earlier a possible explanation is that a small part of the sulfate particles in the fine fraction ended up in the coarse samples. 

Another aspect of marine science that broadly affects our daily lives is the origin of carbonate deposits. Limestone and dolomite are important industrial commodities, are host rocks for ore and oil sources, and are geochemical indices (7). The importance of carbonate rocks is unquestioned. The chemical origin is of scientific interest, and a considerable body of background information is available. (7, 10, 15, 16, 17,40). 

Raiswell R. (1988) Chemical model for the origin of minor limestone-shale cycles by anaerobic methane oxidation. Geology 16,641-644. 

Mixtures of limestone with clays are so-called marl. Other deposits of limestone are marble, travertine, shell limestone and chalk whose properties depend upon their origin. 

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