Cryolite (Na3AlF6, sodium aluminium fluoride) is an uncommon mineral of very limited natural distribution. It is mostly identified with the once large deposit at Ivigtût on the west coast of Greenland.
It was historically used as an ore of aluminium and later in the electroytic processing of the aluminium rich oxide ore, bauxite, which is a combination of aluminium oxide minerals such as gibbsite, boehmite and diaspore. The difficulty of removing aluminium from oxygen in the oxide ores was overcome by the ...
Gibbsite, Al(OH)3, is an important ore of aluminium and is one of three minerals that make up the rock bauxite. Bauxite is often thought of as a mineral but is really a rock composed of aluminium oxide and hydroxide minerals such as gibbsite, boehmite (AlO(OH)), and diaspore (HAlO2), as well as clays, silt, and iron oxides and hydroxides. Bauxite is a laterite, a rock formed from intense weathering environments such as foun ...
Bauxite is a naturally occurring, heterogeneous material composed primarily of one or more aluminium hydroxide minerals, plus various mixtures of silica, iron oxide, titania, aluminium silicates, and other impurities in minor or trace amounts. Bauxite is a sedimentary rock produced by in situ chemical weathering typically under tropical to subtropical climate conditions.
The principal aluminium hydroxide minerals found in varying proportions with bauxites are gibbsite and the polymorphs boehmite and diaspore. Bauxites are typically classified according to their intended commercial application: abrasive, cem ...
Bauxite was named after the village Les Baux de Provence in southern France, where it was first discovered in 1821 by the geologist Pierre Berthier. Knighted in 1832, Sir Berthier went on to establish the Berthier Museum of Geology in Tours.
Due to the exhaustion of its bauxite mines, France has almost completely ceased the exploitation of bauxite since 1991. French mines were located in the Var, Bouches-du-Rhôn ...
