Environmental mineralogy

REVIEW: Yes

DATE: 2012

REF: A.J. Roper, P.A. Williams and M. Filella. Secondary antimony minerals: phases that control the dispersion of antimony in the supergene zone. CHEMIE DER ERDE - GEOCHEMISTRY, 72 S4, 9-14 (2012).

NUMBER OF REFERENCES IN REVIEW: 106 (references up to 2011)

NUMBER OF CITATIONS (up to 31 December 2015): 15

PREVIOUS REVIEWS? No

CONCLUSIONS (adapted from the conclusion of review):

• Although new secondary Sb will be described from time to time, the environmentally important phases have already been discovered. Some require further study in order to establish whether or not they are true phases; partzite is a case in point.
• Many of the known secondary Sb minerals remain to be studied chemically, and few of them are well known as synthetic equivalents. More importantly, solubility and related thermochemical data are available for only a few of the more commonly occurring minerals and much remains to be done in this area. In particular, there is a pressing need for solubility studies of members of the roméite group.
• There is a dearth of information on the kinetics of crystallization and transformation of secondary Sb minerals from one into another. Until this is accomplished, our knowledge of the roles that secondary minerals play in the dispersion of Sb under oxidizing conditions at the Earth’s surface remains somewhat imperfect.

PAPERS PUBLISHED AFTER REVIEW OR MISSED: Lalinská-Volekovová et al. 2012; Leverett et al. 2012; Roper et al. 2014, 2015a, 2015b; Christy and Atencio, 2013; Mills et al., 2014; Kossoff et al., 2015.

REVIEW CITED IN PAPERS AFTER REVIEW? Never.

COMMENTS: There is a high rate of publication on the subject, with valuable new data being published. A new concise review will soon be advisable.