Other Aluminosilicate Minerals

Posttreatment fines migration is quite common in sandstone acidizing. It may be difficult to avoid in many cases. The reaction of HE with clays and other aluminosilicate minerals and quartz can release undissolved fines. Also, new fines may be generated as a result of partial reaction with high-surface-area minerals, particularly clays and certain zeolites, in which they more rarely occur. 

Houdry The first catalytic petroleum cracking process, based on an invention by E. J. Houdiy in 1927, which was developed and commercialized by the Houdry Process Corporation. The process was piloted by the Vacuum Oil Company, Paulsboro, NJ, in the early 1930s. The catalyst was contained in a fixed bed. The first successful catalyst was an aluminosilicate mineral. Subsequently, other related catalysts were developed by Houdry in the United States, by I. G. Farbenindustrie in Germany, and by Imperial Chemical Industries in England. After World War II, the clay-based catalysts were replaced by a variety of synthetic catalysts, many based on alumino-silicates. Later, these too were replaced by zeolites. U.S. Patents 1,837,963 1,957,648 1,957,649. 

Since silicates and aluminosilicates are by far the predominant rock-forming minerals, the crystal structures of most species have been determined. Liebau (1980) presents an overview of the structures of silicate and aluminosilicate minerals, and one can consult Berry, Mason, and Dietrich (1983, especially pp. 382-389) or other mineralogy texts for an introduction to the subject. The multivolume work of Eitel (1965) provides a general treatment of the crystal chemistry of all types of silicate materials. 

In addition to the asbestos varieties many other examples of silicate and aluminosilicate minerals occur in fibrous form. In the following section we present data for a few selected species, indicating the types of chemical... 

Clays are silicate minerals that may be platy or fibrous and are usually of exceedingly fine grain size, ranging from colloidal, a few nanometers in diameter, to a maximum of about a tenth of a micrometer. Similarly to other aluminosilicates, clays show considerable range in chemical composition with concomitant structural modifications (Fig. 2.13). A few of the clay minerals described as fibrous are briefly mentioned here. 

A large number of distinct mineral phases have been reported in various coals (Table 5.1), although lists of minerals in coal may contain as many as 50 to 60 minerals, most fall into one of five groups (1) aluminosilicate minerals (clay minerals), (2) sulfide and sulfate minerals, (3) carbonate minerals, (4) silicate minerals (principally quartz), and (5) other minerals that include minerals that may occur in trace amounts or may be specific to a particular coal having originated because of the localized deposition and maturation conditions (Speight, 1994, and references cited therein). 

The main components of marine sediments are inorganic aluminosilicate minerals which are usually accumulated on the sea floor by river and other geological activities, and also skeletons and shells of marine organisms (mainly calcium carbonate and silica) [2]. Of course, some metal salts or particulates which precipitate from seawater form new minerals, e.g. manganese nodules [2]. The chemical compositions of the three principal types of sediments in the ocean are shown in Table 12 [105], Most of the sediments found in the deep-sea floor are mixtures of these three principal minerals. Study of the sediments in the oceans and seashores can provide important data related to geochemical, oceanographical or biological circulation and deposition of elements, formation and distribution of marine sediments, and exploitation of marine resources. 

In this chapter, the focus is on weathering of feldspars, aluminosilicate minerals, which are the most abundant mineral species in the earth crust (Banfield Hamers, 1997). Feldspars contain aluminium and silicon, which are arranged in a tetrahedral structure, with other cations in the voids of this structure. The common feldspars have compositions ranging between albite (NaAlSisOg) and K-feldspar (KAlSigOg) (alkali feldspars) and between albite and anorthite (CaAl2Si20g) (plagioclase feldspars). 

A hydrothermal solution is a multicomponent system containing com-poimds of Na, K, Si, Ca, Mg, Al, Fe, Cl, S, O, C, B, Li, As, Cu, Zn, Ag, Au, and other elements in ionic and molecular forms. Silicon has one of the highest concentrations. Silica, together with other compounds, passes into this hydrothermal solution due to the chemical interaction of water with aluminosilicate minerals of rocks of hydrothermal fields at a depth in regions of thermal anomalies at high temperatures and pressures. 

In cases where neutral or alkaline mine drainage predominates, problems may arise because of elevated concentrations of SO4, iron, manganese, and other solutes that are derived from sulfide oxidation or from reactions with carbonate or aluminosilicate minerals. Dissolved iron and aluminum may precipitate as the pH increases, and these precipitates can act as substrates for adsorption and co-precipitation (Stumm and Sulzberger, 1992 Foos, 1997 Brake et al., 2001). The dissolution of siderite,... 

Some aluminosilicate minerals appear to meet the above criteria rather well, especially with regard to low leachability and chemical and physical stability 1, 2). A low-temperature process for converting the wastes to aluminosilicates with low leachability has now been found (3). Aqueous waste solutions containing NaOH, NaNOa, NaN02, NaAl02, mixed fission products, and minor amounts of other salts are mixed with powdered clays (kaolin, bentonite, halloysite, or dickite) and allowed to react at 30°-100°C to form small crystals of the mineral cancrinite. The sodium aluminosilicate crystal lattice of cancrinite contains large amounts of trapped salts and radioactive fission products. The process is applicable to caustic radioactive liquids such as neutralized Purex wastes or to salts or oxides produced by evaporation or calcination of these liquid wastes. 

The reactions of several other minerals which thermally decompose to form mullite have been studied by Si and Al NMR. These include the mica mineral muscovite, which also contained sufficient iron to permit a complementary Fe Mossbauer study (MacKenzie et al. 1987), the hydroxyfluoride mineral topaz (Day et al. 1995) and the semi-amorphous aluminosilicate minerals allophane (MacKenzie et al. 1991) and imogolite (MacKenzie et al. 1989). The same combination of NMR nuclei has been used to study the thermal decomposition of other aluminosilicates including an illite-rich clay (Roch et al. 1998), montmorillonite (Brown et al. 1987), and a related mineral, Fuller s Earth (Drachman et al. 1997). NMR has also been used to study the effect of water vapour on the thermal decomposition of montmorillonite clay compacts (Temuujin et al. 2000a). 

However, the synthesis process most extensively studied by solid-state NMR is that of carbothermal reduction of aluminosilicate minerals such as kaolinite, which are mixed with finely divided carbon and heated in nitrogen at > 1400°C (Neal et al. 1994, MacKenzie et al. 1994a). Under carbothermal conditions the clay decomposes to a mixture of mullite and amorphous silica (MacKenzie et al. 1996b), the latter forming SiC which reacts with the mullite to form P-sialon, in some cases via other sialon phases such as X-sialon (see below). The precise reaction sequence and the nature of the intermediates has been shown by the NMR studies to depend on various factors including the nature of the aluminosilicate starting mineral (MacKenzie er a/. 1994a). 

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