Jennite is a

calcium silicate hydrate Calcium silicate hydrate (or C-S-H) is the main product of the hydration of Portland cement and is primarily responsible for the strength in cement based materials (e.g. concrete). Preparation When water is added to cement, each of the compounds u ...

mineral of general chemical formula: Ca₉Si₆O₁₈(OH)₆·8H₂O. Jennite occurs as an alteration mineral in metamorphosed

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms wh ...

and skarn. It typically occurs as

vein Veins are blood vessels in humans and most other animals that carry blood towards the heart. Most veins carry deoxygenated blood from the tissues back to the heart; exceptions are the pulmonary and umbilical veins, both of which carry oxygenate ...

and open space fillings as a late mineral phase. It also occurs in hydrated

cement A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel (aggregate) together. Cement m ...

paste. A first specimen of jennite found in 1966 at the Crestmore quarries (Crestmore,

Riverside County, California Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Uni ...

, US) was analysed and identified as a new mineral by Carpenter in 1966 (Carpenter, 1966). They named it in honor of its discoverer: Clarence Marvin Jenni (1896–1973) director of the Geological Museum at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded ...

. In contrast to the first analysis made by Carpenter, jennite does not contain appreciable amount of sodium when the Crestmore specimen was reexamined (Gard, 1977). The structure of jennite is made of three distinct modules: ribbons of edge-sharing

calcium Calcium is a chemical element with the symbol Ca and atomic number 20. As an alkaline earth metal, calcium is a reactive metal that forms a dark oxide-nitride layer when exposed to air. Its physical and chemical properties are most similar t ...

octahedra In geometry, an octahedron (plural: octahedra, octahedrons) is a polyhedron with eight faces. The term is most commonly used to refer to the regular octahedron, a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, four of which meet at ...

, silicate chains of wollastonite-type running along the b axis, and additional calcium octahedra on inversion centers. The

hydroxyl In chemistry, a hydroxy or hydroxyl group is a functional group with the chemical formula and composed of one oxygen atom covalently bonded to one hydrogen atom. In organic chemistry, alcohols and carboxylic acids contain one or more hydrox ...

groups are bonded to three calcium cations while no SiOH groups are observed (Bonaccorsi, 2004). Jennite transforms to metajennite at by losing four water molecules (Gard, 1977).

Cement chemistry

Jennite is often used in thermodynamical calculations to represent the pole of the less evolved calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H). The value of its atomic Ca/Si or molecular CaO/SiO₂ (C/S) ratio is 1.50 (9/6), as directly calculated from its elementary composition formula. Tobermorite represents the more evolved pole with a C/S ratio of 0.83 (5/6).

References

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Cement chemistry

See also

References

Further reading