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The cryolite mine Ivigtut, Greenland, summer 1940

Cryolite's unit cell

Cryolite (Na₃AlF₆, sodium hexafluoroaluminate) 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, which ran out in 1987. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with cryolite. ... Download high resolution version (811x408, 38 KB)The cryolite mine at Ivgtut, Greenland. ... Download high resolution version (811x408, 38 KB)The cryolite mine at Ivgtut, Greenland. ... Ivittuut, also spelt Ivigtût, is a town in Greenland. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 521 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (956 × 1100 pixel, file size: 336 KB, MIME type: image/png) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Cryolite ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 521 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (956 × 1100 pixel, file size: 336 KB, MIME type: image/png) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Cryolite ... In mineralogy and crystallography, a crystal structure is a unique arrangement of atoms in a crystal. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with cryolite. ... Minerals are natural compounds formed through geological processes. ... Ivittuut, in Danish Ivigtût has been a municipality in the south of West Greenland since 1951. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

It was historically used as an ore of aluminium and later in the electrolytic 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 use of cryolite as a flux in order to extract the aluminium metal. The difficulty in the extraction of aluminium was in its high melting point (above 2000°C). Cryolite lowers the melting point to approximately 900°C to conserve energy. Now, as natural cryolite is too rare to be used for this purpose, synthetic sodium aluminium fluoride is produced from fluorite for this purpose. General Name, Symbol, Number aluminium, Al, 13 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 13, 3, p Appearance silvery Standard atomic weight 26. ... Iron ore (Banded iron formation) Manganese ore Lead ore Gold ore An ore is a volume of rock containing components or minerals in a mode of occurrence which renders it valuable for mining. ... Bauxite with penny Bauxite with core of unweathered rock Bauxite is an aluminium ore. ... Alumina redirects here. ... Gibbsite, Al(OH)3, is an important ore of aluminium and is one of three minerals that make up the rock bauxite. ... Diaspore is a native aluminium hydroxide, AlO(OH), crystallizing in the orthorhombic system and isomorphous with goethite and manganite. ... For the plant structure, see Spore Diaspore from Slovakia Diaspore is a native aluminium hydroxide, AlO(OH), crystallizing in the orthorhombic system and isomorphous with goethite and manganite. ... In metallurgy, flux is a substance which removes passivating oxides from the surface of a metal or alloy. ... Fluorite (also called fluor-spar) is a mineral composed of calcium fluoride, CaF2. ...

Cryolite occurs as glassy, colorless, white, reddish to grey-black prismatic monoclinic crystals. It has a Mohs hardness of 2.5 to 3 and a specific gravity of 2.95 to 3. It is translucent to transparent with very low refractive indices of a=1.3385-1.339, b=1.3389-1.339, g=1.3396-1.34. These RI values are very close to that of water and thus if immersed in water, cryolite becomes essentially invisible. In crystallography, the monoclinic crystal system is one of the 7 lattice point groups. ... Mohs scale of mineral hardness characterizes the scratch resistance of various minerals through the ability of a harder material to scratch a softer. ... Relative density (also known as specific gravity) is a measure of the density of a material. ... The refractive index (or index of refraction) of a medium is a measure for how much the speed of light (or other waves such as sound waves) is reduced inside the medium. ... Impact of a drop of water creating circular capillary waves. ...

In addition to the Greenland occurrence, cryolite has been reported from Pikes Peak in Colorado, U.S.A.; Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, Canada; and at Miass, Russia. It is also known from Brazil, Czech Republic, Namibia, Norway, Ukraine, and several U.S. states. Pikes Peak (formerly Pikes Peak, see below) is a mountain in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, 10 miles (16 km) west of Colorado Springs, Colorado, in El Paso County. ... Official language(s) English Capital Denver Largest city Denver Area  Ranked 8th  - Total 104,185 sq mi (269,837 km²)  - Width 280 miles (451 km)  - Length 380 miles (612 km)  - % water 0. ... For other uses, see United States (disambiguation) and US (disambiguation). ... Mont Saint-Hilaire (en. ... ‹ The template below has been proposed for deletion. ... This article is about the city. ... A U.S. state is any one of the 50 states which have membership of the federation known as the United States of America (USA or U.S.). The separate state governments and the U.S. federal government share sovereignty. ...

Cryolite was first described in 1799 for an occurrence in Ivigtut and Arksukfiord, West Greenland. The name is derived from the Greek kryos = frost and lithos = stone.

References

• Hurlbut, Cornelius S.; Klein, Cornelis, 1985, Manual of Mineralogy, 20th ed., John Wiley and Sons, New York ISBN 0-471-80580-7
• Webmineral data
• Mindat with location data
• Mineral galleries