Trona
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- This page is about the mineral. For the town, please see Trona, California; for the geological feature, please see Trona Pinnacles.
| Trona | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Trona sample |
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| General | |
| Category | Carbonate mineral |
| Chemical formula | Na3(CO3)(HCO3)•2H2O |
| Identification | |
| Color | Colorless or white, also grey to yellowish grey |
| Crystal habit | Columnar, fibrous and massive. |
| Crystal system | Monoclinic - Prismatic 2/m |
| Cleavage | [100] perfect, [111] and [001] indistinct |
| Fracture | Brittle - subconchoidal |
| Mohs scale hardness | 2.5 |
| Luster | Vitreous |
| Streak | White |
| Diaphaneity | Translucent |
| Specific gravity | 2.11 - 2.17 |
| Optical properties | Biaxial (-) |
| Refractive index | nα = 1.412 nβ = 1.492 nγ = 1.540 |
| Birefringence | δ = 0.128 |
| Solubility | Soluble in water |
| Other characteristics | May fluoresce under short wavelength ultrviolet |
| References | [1][2][3] |
Trona (trisodium hydrogendicarbonate dihydrate); Na3H(CO3)2·2H2O is an evaporite mineral.[3][4] It is mined as the primary source of sodium carbonate in the United States, where it has replaced the Solvay process used in most of the rest of the world for sodium carbonate production.
Contents |
[edit] Natural occurrence
Trona is found at Owens Lake and Searles Lake, California; the Green River Formation of Wyoming and Utah; the Makgadikgadi Pans[5] in Botswana and in the Nile Valley in Egypt. The trona near Green River, Wyoming is the largest known deposit in the world and lies in layered evaporite deposits from 800 to 1,600 feet (240 to 490 m) below ground, where the trona was deposited in a lake during the Paleogene period.[6] Trona has also been mined at Lake Magadi in the Rift Valley in Kenya for nearly 100 years, and occurs in 'salt' pans in the Etosha National Park in Namibia.[citation needed]
[edit] Etymology
The word "trona" comes to English by way of either Swedish (trona) or Spanish (trona), with both possible sources having the same meaning as in English. Both of these derive from the Arabic trōn which in turn derives from the Arabic natron, and Hebrew נטרן pronounced natrun, which comes from ancient Greek νιτρον, derived ultimately from ancient Egyptian ntry (or nitry).
[edit] Companies with trona mining operations
- Magadi Soda Company
- Searles Valley Minerals Inc.
- Solvay
- Tata Chemicals
- FMC Corporation
- General Chemical
- OCI
- American Natural Soda Ash Company
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ http://rruff.geo.arizona.edu/doclib/hom/trona.pdf Handbook of Mineralogy
- ^ http://www.mindat.org/min-4031.html Mindat
- ^ a b http://webmineral.com/data/Trona.shtml Webmineral data
- ^ http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/carbonat/trona/trona.htm Mineral galleries, 2008
- ^ C. Michael Hogan (2008) Makgadikgadi, The Megalithic Portal, ed. A. Burnham
- ^ Banks, Chad (2007-05-24). What is Trona? Wyoming Mining Association. Retrieved on 2009-07-01 from http://www.sweda.net/PDF/trona.pdf.
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