Russian geologists found a new mineral in the cracks of a volcano in Kamchatka and named it Dravertite. The novelty has been successfully approved by the International Mineralogical Association. It turned out that the discovered sample has a very ordered structure and high chemical resistance.
The study involved employees of the Geological Faculty of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov, the Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch (FEB) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Mineralogical Museum. Fersman and St. Petersburg State University.
As one of the participants in the study, Igor Pekov, the chief researcher of the Department of Mineralogy of the Geological Faculty of Moscow State University, told Izvestia, most of the recently discovered minerals have a complex chemical composition.
“The sample we found has a very simple one,” noted Igor Pekov. “At the same time, at the time of the discovery, its analogues or close“relatives”, both chemically and structurally, were not found even among the much more numerous synthetic inorganic substances.
Scientists have studied the active fumarole fields of the Tolbachik volcano in Kamchatka. Fumaroles are cracks and holes in craters from which hot gases escape. Their clusters appeared on Tolbachik after a strong eruption in 1975-1976. These cracks have remained hot for more than 40 years: the temperature of volcanic gases in the places where they come to the surface there today reaches 500 degrees Celsius.
During the expedition, scientists extracted mineral samples from two volcanic fissures with high temperature gases. They seemed unusual to geologists. Using an electron probe microanalyzer, it was possible to determine their chemical composition. It turned out to be a mixture of sulfates - copper with an admixture of zinc and a small amount of magnesium, in the complete absence of hydrogen-containing groups. At the same time, anhydrous sulfates of both copper and magnesium are quite rare in nature.
The infrared spectrum and X-ray powder diffraction patterns indicated the relationship of the new mineral with chalcocyanite, a simple anhydrous copper sulfate, which is quite widespread in the cracks of Tolbachik volcano. Despite the relationship, the connections were very different. Chalcocyanite is capricious; after a few days of contact with cold atmospheric air containing moisture, it begins to turn into aqueous copper sulfates. But dravertite is stable in air.
To unravel the nature of the new mineral and its properties, the scientists performed X-ray diffraction analysis. The compound turned out to be of a previously unknown type. Dravertite is indeed related to chalcocyanite, but copper and magnesium are strictly ordered in the crystal lattice of the new mineral. This structure makes it resistant to chemical "aggressors".
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“After the discovery of dravertite, scientists from St. Petersburg State University and the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences discovered a zinc analogue of dravertite with the same crystal structure in the cracks of the Tolbachik volcano,” Yevgeny Rogozhin, deputy director of the Institute of Physics of the Earth RAS, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, told Izvestia. - This confirmed that representatives of this structural type are formed only in harsh conditions - in hot cracks on active volcanoes.
The discovered unusual mineral was named Dravertite in honor of the famous Soviet specialist in mineralogy, geology and the study of meteorites, Peter Dravert.
Anastasia Sinitskaya