Weathering gibbsite

There are no unequivocal weathering reactions for the siUcate minerals. Depending on the nature of parent rocks and hydrauhc regimes, various secondary minerals like gibbsite, kaolinite, smectites, and iUites are formed as reaction products. Some important dissolution processes of siUcates are given, for example, by the following reactions (19). 

A proponent of "reverse weathering" suggested that gibbsite, kaolinite, and quartz exist in equilibrium according to the following equation. In equilibrium expressions for these reactions, water will appear as the activity, rather than concentration. The activity can be approximated by the mole fraction of water. What is the activity of water if this equilibrium is maintained Could this equilibrium exist in seawater, where the mole fraction of water is about 0.98 AG values (kj/mol) gibbsite — 2320.4 kaolinite — 3700.7 quartz —805.0 water —228.4. 

In the simulation, CO2 in the soil gas reacts with the feldspars, leading to the alkali leaching and separation of silica from alumina observed to result from soil weathering. Near the top of the profile, the reaction produces gibbsite and adds Na+, K+, and Si02(aq) to the migrating pore fluid, according to the reactions,... 

Products of weathering and soil colloids, e.g., aluminum silicates, kaolinite, gibbsite, Si02... 

Ca (aq), Mg (aq), and HCOjCaq). Silicate weathering is an incongruent process. The most important of these reactions involves the weathering of the feldspar minerals, ortho-clase, albite, and anorthite. The dissolved products are K (aq), Na (aq), and Ca (aq), and the solid products are the clay minerals, illite, kaolinite, and montmorillonite. The weathering of kaolinite to gibbsite and the partial dissolution of quartz and chert also produces some DSi,... 

For various reasons, gibbsite and kaolinite are really the only minerals of the "neutral lattice" type which occur with any frequency in non-metamorphic rocks. These minerals are formed in soils, most noticeably from granitic rocks but are also commonly found forming from basic rocks during the weathering process (Millot, 1964 Tardy, 1969). The... 

Gibbsite, a mineral more and more frequently identified in the early stages of rock weathering (especially magmatic rocks) is usually not important in river sediments but has been noted in small quantities over large areas in deep sea sediments (Griffin, et al., 1968 Biscay, 1965). 

Aluminium oxide is the oldest ceramic material used in medicine. Bauxite and corundum are the main natural sources of aluminium oxide. Bauxite is a mixture of diaspore, gibbsite, iron hydroxides, clay minerals and quartz. It is formed by the tropical weathering of silicate rocks during which quartz and the elements sodium, calcium, magnesium and potassium are largely washed away. This is the reason why the remaining material becomes richer in the resistant elements titanium, iron and aluminium. The latter is extracted from this mixture in the form of aluminium hydroxide. In its turn this compound is converted into aluminium oxide by heating the mixture to 1200-1300 °C, this is called calcination. The hydroxide is thus made anhydrous. 

Aluminum is present in many primary minerals. The weathering of these primary minerals over time results in the deposition of sedimentary clay minerals, such as the aluminosilicates kaolinite and montmorillonite. The weathering of soil results in the more rapid release of silicon, and aluminum precipitates as hydrated aluminum oxides such as gibbsite and boehmite, which are constituents of bauxites and laterites (Bodek et al. 1988). Aluminum is found in the soil complexed with other electron rich species such as fluoride, sulfate, and phosphate. 

Most of the chlorite-like material formed in soils is dioctahedral rather than trioctahedral. In the process of weathering, illite and muscovite are stripped of their potassium and water enters between the layers. In these minerals and in montmoril-lonites and vermiculites, hydroxides are precipitated in the interlayer positions to form a chlorite-like mineral (Rich and Obenshain, 1955 Klages and White, 1957 Brydon et al., 1961 Jackson, 1963 Quigley and Martin, 1963 Rich, 1968). Al(OH)3 and Fe(OH)3 are likely to be precipitated in an acid to mildly basic environments and Mg(OH)2 in a basic environment. The gibbsite sheets in the soil chlorites are seldom complete and the material resembles a mixed-layer chlorite-vermiculite. The gibbsite may occur between some layers and not between others or may occur as islands separated by water molecules. 

As an example of these ideas, an activity-ratio diagram for control of Al(III) solubility by secondary minerals in an acidic soil solution will be constructed. The Jackson-Sherman weathering scenario14 indicates that when soil profiles are leached free of silica with fresh water, 2 1 layer-type clay minerals are replaced by 1 1 layer-type clay minerals, and ultimately these are replaced by metal oxyhydroxides. This sequence of clay mineral transformations can be represented by the successive dissolution reactions of smectite, kaolinite, and gibbsite ... 

The composition of the weathering water often determines the composition of the final stable mineral product. For example, the potassium feldspar/mica/gibbsite system under weathering can be simplified as follows (see Fergusson, 1985) ... 

Aluminum, the third most abundant element in the Earth s crust, is mined as bauxite, a mixure of gibbsite, boehmite, and diaspore. These ores occur dominantly in Cenozoic deposits formed by lateritic weathering of aluminous parent rock, which has broken down to leave a high proportion of aluminum-bearing minerals. These deposits are residual in nature, with the balance of the rock constituents removed by selective leaching. These deposits form most commonly in tropical and subtropical areas. 

Attempts to model chemical weathering of catchments have used a variety of approaches and were originally designed to understand acidification processes. The BIRKENES code (Christophersen et al., 1982) was one of the first developed to model catchment stream chemistry. It used cation-anion charge balance, a gibbsite equilibrium solubility control for aluminum concentrations, a Gapon ion exchange for metals sorption, and rates for sulfate adsorption/ desorption in a two-reservoir model. The model was calibrated by input mass fluxes and output mass fluxes for the Birkenes catchment in Norway to provide the water flux information and to fit empirical parameters. 

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