Rocks, silicic

Asbestos constitutes several types of hydrated silicate mineral fibers. The types of asbestos, their chemical compositions, and CAS Numbers are presented in Table 3.8.1. These substances occur in nature in rocks, silicate minerals, fibrous stones, and underground mines. This class of substances exhibits unique properties of noncombustibility, high resistance to acids, and high tensile strength for which they were widely used in many products, including floor and roofing tiles, cement, textiles, ropes, wallboards, and papers. Because of the health hazards associated with excessive exposure to asbestos, the use of these substances is currently banned. 

The Tuscany Magmatic Province consists of an association of calc-alkaline to lamproitic mafic to intermediate magmas and silicic intrusive and effusive rocks. Silicic melts have been formed by crustal melting, with an important role of mixing with mantle-derived magmas. Mafic melts are of mantle origin but resemble closely some upper crustal rocks, such as metapelites, in terms of incompatible trace elements and radiogenic isotope... 

The real values of CO2 content in the early atmosphere are very uncertain. One way to calculate this value is to estimate the crustal abundance of carbon. This element is mainly stored in carbonate rocks and modern assessments give the value of lO" Tg. This is enough to produce an atmospheric pressure of 60 bars if it had been presented as gaseous CO2. Even if only one-third of this amount was present in the atmosphere at the moment of accretion, the pressure would be about 20 bars. How long this dense CO2 atmosphere would have lasted depends on the rate of rock silicate transformation to the carbonates. This rate, in turn, would have depended on the surface temperature on the early Earth and on the amount of continental area exposed to weathering. 

Petrographic composition of the rocks (e.g. carbonate rocks, silicate rocks)... 

Uranium in epigenetic sandstone deposits is believed to have come from such varied sources as weathering of granitic rocks, siliceous tuffs or other uraniferous rocks in the source area for the sandstone devitrification of tuffaceous sediment in or interbedded with the sandstone hydrothermal solutions from nearby magmas and recycling and redistribution of earlier-formed uranium deposits. 

The analysis is limited to compounds made of the usual elements of organic chemistry, with the exclusion of organometaUics, rocks, silicates, and metals. 

Reservoir rocks are either of clastic or carbonate composition. The former are composed of silicates, usually sandstone, the latter of biogenetically derived detritus, such as coral or shell fragments. There are some important differences between the two rock types which affect the quality of the reservoir and its interaction with fluids which flow through them. 

After oxygen, silicon is the most abundant element in the earth s crust, It occurs extensively as the oxide, silica, in various forms, for example, flint, quartz, sand, and as silicates in rocks and clays, but not as the free element, silicon. Silicon is prepared by reduction of silica, Si02- Powdered amorphous silicon can be obtained by heating dry powdered silica with either powdered magnesium or a... 

Silicon makes up 25.7% of the earth s crust, by weight, and is the second most abundant element, being exceeded only by oxygen. Silicon is not found free in nature, but occurs chiefly as the oxide and as silicates. Sand, quartz, rock crystal, amethyst, agate, flint, jasper, and opal are some of the forms in which the oxide appears. Granite, hornblende, asbestos, feldspar, clay, mica, etc. are but a few of the numerous silicate minerals. 

The element is found in niobite (or columbite), niobite-tantalite, parochlore, and euxenite. Large deposits of niobium have been found associated with carbonatites (carbon-silicate rocks), as a constituent of parochlore. Extensive ore reserves are found in Canada, Brazil, Nigeria, Zaire, and in Russia. 

Aluminosilicates. These silicates consist of frameworks of silica and alumina tetrahedra linked at all corners to form three-dimensional networks familiar examples are the common rock-forming minerals quartz and feldspar. Framework silicates generally form blocky crystals, more isotropic... 

Organic tellurium compounds and siliceous materials, ie, rock, ore, or concentrates, are fused with mixtures of sodium carbonate and alkaline oxidants, ie, sodium peroxide, potassium nitrate, or potassium persulfate. For volatile compounds, this fusion is performed in a bomb or a closed-system microwave digestion vessel. An oxidising fusion usually converts tellurium into Te(VI) rather than Te(IV). 

Bentonite is a rock rich in montmorillonite that has usually resulted from the alteration of volcanic dust (ash) of the intermediate (latitic) siliceous types. In general, reUcts of partially unaltered feldspar, quartz, or volcanic glass shards offer evidence of the parent rock. Most adsorbent clays, bleaching clays, and many clay catalysts are smectites, although some are palygorskite [1337-76 ]. 

A. Soutar, S. R. Johnson, and T. R. Baumgartner, in C. Isaacs and J. Garison, eds.. The Monterey Formation and Related Siliceous Rocks of California, Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, 1981, p. 123. 

Recommended Thickness of Insulation Indoor insulation thickness appears in Table II-2I, and outdoor thickness appears in Table 11-22. These selections were based upon calcium silicate insulation with a suitable aluminum jacket. However, the variation in thickness for fiberglass, cellular glass, and rockwool is minimal. Fiberglass is available for maximum temperatures of 260, 343, and 454°C ( 500, 650, and 850°F). Rock wool, cellular glass, and calcium sihcate are used up to 649°C (I200°F). 

Vitreous, colourless form of free silica. Formed when quartz is heated to 870°C (1598°F). Aporous siliceous rock resulting from the decomposition of chertorsiliceous limestone. Used as a base in soap and scouring powders, in metal polishing, as a filtering agent, and in wood and paint fillers. A cryptocrystalline form of free silica. 

A great variety of aluminium-silicate bearing rocks, plastic when wet, hard when dry. Used in pottery, stoneware, tile, bricks, cements, fillers and abrasives. Kaolin is one type of clay. Some clay deposits may include appreciable amounts of quartz. Commercial grades of clays may contain up to 20% quartz. 

Oxygen is the most abundant element on earth. The earth s crust is rich in carbonate and silicate rocks, the oceans are almost entirely water, and oxygen constitutes almost one fifth of the air we breathe. Carbon ranks only fourteenth among the elements in natural abundance, but trails only hydrogen and oxygen in its abundance in the human body. It is the chemical properties of carbon that make it uniquely suitable as the raw material forthe building blocks of life. Let s find out more about those chemical properties. 

Graphite is widely distributed throughout the world though much of it is of little economic importance. Large crystals or flake occur in metamorphosed sedimentary silicate rocks such as quartz, mica schists and gneisses crystal size varies from <1 mm up to about 6 mm (average 4mm) and the deposits form lenses up to 30 m thick stretching several... 

In addition to its presence as the free element in the atmosphere and dissolved in surface waters, oxygen occurs in combined form both as water, and a constituent of most rocks, minerals, and soils. The estimated abundance of oxygen in the crustal rocks of the earth is 455 000 ppm (i.e. 45.5% by weight) see silicates, p. 347 aluminosilicates, p. 347 carbonates, p. 109 phosphates, p. 475, etc. 

With the exception of actinium, which is found naturally only in traces in uranium ores, these elements are by no means rare though they were once thought to be so Sc 25, Y 31, La 35 ppm of the earth s crustal rocks, (cf. Co 29ppm). This was, no doubt, at least partly because of the considerable difficulty experienced in separating them from other constituent rare earths. As might be expected for class-a metals, in most of their minerals they are associated with oxoanions such as phosphate, silicate and to a lesser extent carbonate. 

Zinc (76ppm of the earth s crust) is about as abundant as rubidium (78 ppm) and slightly more abundant than copper (68 ppm). Cadmium (0.16 ppm) is similar to antimony (0.2 ppm) it is twice as abundant as mercury (0.08 ppm), which is itself as abundant as silver (0.08 ppm) and close to selenium (0.05 ppm). These elements are chalcophiles (p. 648) and so, in the reducing atmosphere prevailing when the earth s crust solidified, they separated out in the sulfide phase, and their most important ores are therefore sulfides. Subsequently, as rocks were weathered, zinc was leached out to be precipitated as carbonate, silicate or phosphate. 

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