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Halite dominantly occurs within sedimentary rocks where it has formed from the evaporation of seawater or salty lake water. Vast beds of sedimentary evaporite minerals, including halite, can result from the drying up of enclosed lakes and restricted seas.
The Atacama Desert has large quantities of halide minerals as well as chlorates, iodates, oxyhalides, nitrates, borates and other water-soluble minerals. Not only do those minerals occur in subsurface geologic deposits, they also form crusts on the Earth's surface due to the low rainfall (the Atacama is the world's driest desert as well as one ...
Trapped in a time capsule the same size as the diameter of a human hair, the ore-forming liquid in this inclusion was so hot and contained so much dissolved solids that when it cooled, crystals of halite, sylvite, gypsum, and hematite formed. As the samples cooled, the fluid shrank more than the surrounding mineral, and created a vapor bubble.
Among most minerals, this property is not diagnostic. Rock forming minerals – typically silicates or occasionally carbonates – have a specific gravity of 2.5–3.5. [88] High specific gravity is a diagnostic property of a mineral. A variation in chemistry (and consequently, mineral class) correlates to a change in specific gravity.
It is transparent or translucent, brittle, hygroscopic, and occurs as the mineral halite. In its edible form, it is commonly used as a condiment and food preservative. Large quantities of sodium chloride are used in many industrial processes, and it is a major source of sodium and chlorine compounds used as feedstocks for further chemical syntheses
The thick halite beds of the Prairie Evaporite Formation are essentially impermeable, and numerous solution caverns have been artificially created in them to store natural gas and liquified petroleum gas products. [8] Storage of nuclear waste, carbon dioxide, and other waste products has also been discussed. [1]
Polyhalite is an evaporite mineral, a hydrated sulfate of potassium, calcium and magnesium with formula: K 2 Ca 2 Mg(SO 4) 4 ·2H 2 O.Polyhalite crystallizes in the triclinic system, although crystals are very rare.
Divalent lead (Pb) cations and sulfur (S) anions form a close-packed cubic unit cell much like the mineral halite of the halide mineral group. Zinc, cadmium, iron, copper, antimony, arsenic, bismuth and selenium also occur in variable amounts in galena. Selenium substitutes for sulfur in the structure constituting a solid solution series.