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Techniques for CollectorsLiquid for cleaning water soluble specimens.
2nd Jul 2015 01:50 UTCJoseph Taggart
2nd Jul 2015 02:28 UTCDoug Daniels
2nd Jul 2015 02:48 UTCNelse Miller
2nd Jul 2015 04:46 UTCDoug Daniels
2nd Jul 2015 09:02 UTCRock Currier Expert
2nd Jul 2015 11:54 UTCEvan Johnson
2nd Jul 2015 14:44 UTCReiner Mielke Expert
2nd Jul 2015 15:15 UTCJeff Weissman Expert
Best maybe to gently expose specimen to compressed air or use an artist brush to clean - no liquids involved.
2nd Jul 2015 16:54 UTCD. Peck
2nd Jul 2015 17:23 UTCReiner Mielke Expert
2nd Jul 2015 22:18 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager
3rd Jul 2015 00:02 UTCLuca Baralis Expert
The red, common, kind can dye your specimen!
3rd Jul 2015 00:13 UTCJoseph Taggart
3rd Jul 2015 15:51 UTCD. Peck
13th Aug 2015 01:28 UTCJoseph Taggart
My ultrasonic has a lid, and I kept it handy - just in case I needed to cut off the oxygen supply from a fire. You might want to keep some sort of lid handy, but make sure you inspect the lid for sealing either the jar or the tank of the ultrasonic cleaner. Check it before you need it.
13th Aug 2015 08:35 UTCRock Currier Expert
13th Aug 2015 16:19 UTCReiner Mielke Expert
13th Aug 2015 16:26 UTCSteve Hardinger 🌟 Expert
Or consult a practicing organic chemist. I know a few.
13th Aug 2015 16:34 UTCJeff Weissman Expert
Joseph's approach to make a solvent that is as dry as practical, though the use of a highly active drying agent - in this case CaO, lime, ensures that the remaining activity of water in the solvent (if any remains at all) is extremely low - thus he can use his very low water activity solvent to clean dry substances, lasalite and hummerite in this case, safely, as we assume the activity for hydration of the minerals is less than that of lime. If the solvent was not thoroughly dried before being exposing to the minerals, even a low concentration of water, much less than 10 %, will have some activity towards solvating the minerals. What concentration of water can be tolerated in the solvent before damaging minerals needs to be determined experimentally.
As an example, suppose you dried the solvent with lasalite (if you had this much) and then used the dried solvent to clean lime. I would expect the lime to be attacked by remaining water, as lime will extract more water from the solvent than an already partially hydrated mineral such as lasalite. The relative extents of the interactions between remaining water and lime would depend on, quantities of materials used (excessive solvent and/or excessive drying agent), time, temperature, pressure and partial pressures, grain size of the solids used, etc...
Consider quartz - generally considered to be insoluble. At high pressures and temperatures, the solubility of quartz and silicates in hydrothermal solutions is well known as the chemical activity of water is very high under these conditions. I have dissolved quartz using steam, at low pressures, but at 950 °C, where the activity of water is sufficiently high to attack a substance that normally is nearly insoluble at room temperature. Other minerals, gypsum comes to mind, that will be slowly attacked by water at room temperature, but sufficiently slow that one could clean gypsum specimens in water
Joseph - we need pictures to see how effective your method is!
13th Aug 2015 16:47 UTCReiner Mielke Expert
13th Aug 2015 17:58 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager
13th Aug 2015 20:15 UTCJoseph Taggart
Rock, for cleaning larger specimens of evaporite minerals let me tell you what Dick Jones (Arizona field collector and Mineral Dealer) did when he broke through the crust of a dry lake bed into a brine pool with large thenardite crystals in the clay at the bottom of the pool. To clean the muck off the specimens he used the super saturated brine to clean them without attacking them. In fact I believe he even brought home a bucket of the brine to continue his preparation work at home. For someone who wanted to clean halite specimens, I would suggest buying a bag of salt used for regenerating water softners and mixing it with water until saturated. To make sure the brine stays saturated, add an excess of salt so some remains undissolved on the bottom.
The gypsum dried at 400* to 450* is the hemihydrate of CaSO4 know as plaster of Paris or the mineral bassanite and can absorb moisture relatively rapidly in a reversible reaction. If dried at too high a temperature the CaSO4 becomes the mineral Anhydrite which absorbs moisture so slowly it takes geologic time, and is impractical as a desiccant. I used the hemihydrate to dry the alcohol, because I had previous experience (under the brand name Drierite) with it in my organic chemistry class.
Joe Taggart
14th Aug 2015 06:44 UTCRock Currier Expert
I, Dick Jones and Gary Novak collected together on Soda Lake and I may have helped him carry that bucket of brine off the lake. Pictures are posted on Mindat.
14th Aug 2015 17:54 UTCJoseph Taggart
Its a small world, who'd have thought that the very thing I was telling you about, you were actually involved in. Great pictures! I thought other people might like to see the brine pools without having to spend time searching through all your posted pictures. To save them time here is a hot link they can click on:
http://www.mindat.org/gallery.php?cform_is_valid=1&frm_id=pager&min=&loc=&u=2982&potd=&pco=&d=&showtype=1&photoclass=&filtmin=0&filtcountry=0&loctxt=&keywords=soda&mycol=&orderxby=1&submit_pager=Filter+Search&cf_pager_page=2
Joe
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Copyright © mindat.org and the Hudson Institute of Mineralogy 1993-2024, except where stated. Most political location boundaries are © OpenStreetMap contributors. Mindat.org relies on the contributions of thousands of members and supporters. Founded in 2000 by Jolyon Ralph.
Privacy Policy - Terms & Conditions - Contact Us / DMCA issues - Report a bug/vulnerability Current server date and time: April 25, 2024 21:14:48