Trona (trisodium hydrogendicarbonate di
hydrate
In chemistry, a hydrate is a substance that contains water or its constituent elements. The chemical state of the water varies widely between different classes of hydrates, some of which were so labeled before their chemical structure was understo ...
, also
sodium sesquicarbonate
Sodium sesquicarbonate (systematic name: trisodium hydrogendicarbonate) Na3H(CO3)2 is a double salt of sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate (NaHCO3 · Na2CO3), and has a needle-like crystal structure. However, the term is also applied to an e ...
dihydrate, Na
2CO
3•2NaHCO
3•3H
2O) is a non-
marine
Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean.
Marine or marines may refer to:
Ocean
* Maritime (disambiguation)
* Marine art
* Marine biology
* Marine debris
* Marine habitats
* Marine life
* Marine pollution
Military
* ...
evaporite mineral
In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. ( ...
.
It is
mined as the primary source of
sodium carbonate
Sodium carbonate, , (also known as washing soda, soda ash and soda crystals) is the inorganic compound with the formula Na2CO3 and its various hydrates. All forms are white, odourless, water-soluble salts that yield moderately alkaline solutions ...
in the United States, where it has replaced the
Solvay process used in most of the rest of the world for sodium carbonate production.
Etymology
The word entered English by way of either Swedish () or Spanish (), with both possible sources having the same meaning as in English. Both of these derive from the Arabic ''trōn'', which in turn derives from the Arabic ''
natron'', and Hebrew (''natruna''), which comes from
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
(''nitron''), derived ultimately from
ancient Egyptian ''ntry'' (or ''nitry'’).
Natural deposits
![Trona from Trona](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Trona_from_Trona.jpg)
Trona is found at
Owens Lake
Owens Lake is a mostly dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is about south of Lone Pine, California. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for th ...
and
Searles Lake,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
; the
Green River Formation
The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The sediments are deposited in very fine ...
of
Wyoming
Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...
and
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
; the
Makgadikgadi Pans
The Makgadikgadi Pan (Tswana pronunciation ), a salt pan situated in the middle of the dry savanna of north-eastern Botswana, is one of the largest salt flats in the world. The pan is all that remains of the formerly enormous Lake Makgadikg ...
in
Botswana
Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label=Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahar ...
and in the
Nile Valley
The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest rive ...
in
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
. The trona near
Green River, Wyoming
Green River is a city in and the county seat of Sweetwater County, Wyoming, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. The population was 12,515 at the 2010 census.
History
The townsite of Green River, Dakota Territory was platte ...
, is the largest known deposit in the world and lies in layered
evaporite deposits below ground, where the trona was deposited in a lake during the
Paleogene
The Paleogene ( ; British English, also spelled Palaeogene or Palæogene; informally Lower Tertiary or Early Tertiary) is a geologic period, geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period million yea ...
Period.
[Wyoming Mining Association (2017)]
Wyoming Mining Association: Trona Mining
Wyoming Mining Association. Retrieved on 2017-10-25. Trona has also been mined at
Lake Magadi
Lake Magadi is the southernmost lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley, lying in a catchment of faulted volcanic rocks, north of Tanzania's Lake Natron. During the dry season, it is 80% covered by soda and is well known for its wading birds, including f ...
in the
Kenyan Rift Valley for nearly 100 years. The northern part of
Lake Natron is covered by a 1.5 m thick trona bed, and occurs in 'salt' pans in the
Etosha National Park
Etosha National Park is a national park in northwestern Namibia and one of the largest national parks in Africa. It was proclaimed a game reserve in March 1907 in Ordinance 88 by the Governor of German South West Africa, Friedrich von Lindequist. ...
in
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...
. The
Beypazari region in the
Ankara Province of
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
has some 33 trona beds in two
fault-bound lensoid bodies in and above
oil shales of the Lower Hirka Formation (16 in the lower and 17 in the upper body). The Wucheng basin trona mine,
Henan Province China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
has some 36 trona beds (693–974 m deep), the lower 15 beds are 0.5–1.5 m thick, thickest 2.38 m; the upper 21 beds are 1–3 m thick, with a maximum of 4.56 m hosted and underlain by
dolomitic
Dolomite () is an anhydrous carbonate mineral composed of calcium magnesium carbonate, ideally The term is also used for a sedimentary carbonate rock composed mostly of the mineral dolomite. An alternative name sometimes used for the dolomiti ...
oil shales of the Wulidui Formation.
Trona has also been found in
magmatic
Magma () is the molten or semi-molten natural material from which all igneous rocks are formed. Magma is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and evidence of magmatism has also been discovered on other terrestrial planets and some natural sa ...
environments.
[Markl, G., and Baumgartner, L. (2002) pH changes in peralkaline late-magmatic fluids. Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, 144, 331–346.] Research has shown that trona can be formed by auto
metasomatic reactions of late-magmatic fluids or
melts (or
supercritical fluid
A supercritical fluid (SCF) is any substance at a temperature and pressure above its critical point, where distinct liquid and gas phases do not exist, but below the pressure required to compress it into a solid. It can effuse through porous so ...
-melt mixtures), with earlier
crystallized
Crystallization is the process by which solid forms, where the atoms or molecules are highly organized into a structure known as a crystal. Some ways by which crystals form are precipitating from a solution, freezing, or more rarely depos ...
rocks within the same
plutonic
Intrusive rock is formed when magma penetrates existing rock, crystallizes, and solidifies underground to form '' intrusions'', such as batholiths, dikes, sills, laccoliths, and volcanic necks.Intrusive RocksIntrusive rocks accessdate: March ...
complex, or by large-scale
vapor unmixing in the very final stages of magmatism.
Crystal structure
![Trona crystal structure](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Trona_crystal_structure.jpg)
The
crystal structure
In crystallography, crystal structure is a description of the ordered arrangement of atoms, ions or molecules in a crystal, crystalline material. Ordered structures occur from the intrinsic nature of the constituent particles to form symmetric pat ...
of trona was first determined by Brown et al. (1949). The structure consists of units of 3 edge-sharing sodium polyhedra (a central octahedron flanked by septahedra), cross-linked by carbonate groups and
hydrogen bond
In chemistry, a hydrogen bond (or H-bond) is a primarily electrostatic force of attraction between a hydrogen (H) atom which is covalently bound to a more electronegative "donor" atom or group (Dn), and another electronegative atom bearing a ...
s. Bacon and Curry (1956) refined the structure determination using two-dimensional single-crystal
neutron diffraction
Neutron diffraction or elastic neutron scattering is the application of neutron scattering to the determination of the atomic and/or magnetic structure of a material. A sample to be examined is placed in a beam of thermal or cold neutrons to o ...
, and suggested that the hydrogen atom in the symmetric (HC
2O
6)
3− anion is disordered. The environment of the disordered H atom was later investigated by Choi and Mighell (1982) at 300 K with three-dimensional single-crystal neutron diffraction: they concluded that the H atom is dynamically disordered between two equivalent sites, separated from one another by 0.211(9) Å. The dynamically disordered H atom was reinvestigated at low temperature by O'Bannon et al. 2014 and they concluded that it does not order at temperatures as low as 100K.
Uses of trona
* Trona is a common source of
soda ash, which is a significant economic commodity because of its applications in manufacturing glass, chemicals, paper, detergents, and textiles.
* It is used to condition water.
* It is used to remove sulfur from both
flue gas
Flue gas is the gas exiting to the atmosphere via a flue, which is a pipe or channel for conveying exhaust gases from a fireplace, oven, furnace, boiler or steam generator. Quite often, the flue gas refers to the combustion exhaust gas produced a ...
es and
lignite
Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, is a soft, brown, combustible, sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It has a carbon content around 25–35%, and is considered the lowest rank of coal due to its relatively low heat ...
coals.
* It is a product of
carbon sequestration
Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon in a carbon pool. Carbon dioxide () is naturally captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical, and physical processes. These changes can be accelerated through changes in land ...
of
flue gas
Flue gas is the gas exiting to the atmosphere via a flue, which is a pipe or channel for conveying exhaust gases from a fireplace, oven, furnace, boiler or steam generator. Quite often, the flue gas refers to the combustion exhaust gas produced a ...
es.
* It is also used as a food additive.
Mining operations
*
Rio Tinto – Owens Lake
*
Magadi Soda Company
The Magadi Soda Company manufactures soda ash at the Kenyan town of Magadi, which is in southwestern Kenya. It is the largest manufacturer of soda ash in Africa. The company was founded in 1911 and mines trona from Lake Magadi, in the Rift Valley ...
*
Searles Valley Minerals Inc.
*
Solvay Solvay may refer to:
Companies and organizations
* Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Brussels, Belgium
* Solvay Conference, founded by Ernest Solvay, deals with open questions in physics and chemistry
* Solvay Indupa, an Argentin ...
*
Tata Chemicals
Tata Chemicals Limited is an Indian global company with interests in chemicals, crop protection and specialty chemistry products headquartered in Mumbai, India. The company is one of the largest chemical companies in India with operations in In ...
*
Genesis Alkali
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
formerly
Tronox
Tronox Limited is an American worldwide chemical company involved in the titanium products industry with approximately 6,500 employees. Following its acquisition of the mineral sands business formerly belonging to South Africa's Exxaro Resources ...
Alkali
''formerly
FMC Corporation''
*
General Chemical
Tata Chemicals Limited is an Indian global company with interests in chemicals, crop protection and specialty chemistry products headquartered in Mumbai, India. The company is one of the largest chemical companies in India with operations in In ...
*
Ciner Wyoming
The Ciner Wyoming LCC is a mining and chemical industry company based in Wyoming, United States producing natural soda ash from trona. The initial company was founded in 1962. Since 2015, it is under the control of the Turkish Ciner Holding.
Back ...
''formerly
OCI Chemical Corp.''
*
ANSAC
American Natural Soda Ash Corporation (ANSAC) operates as the international distribution arm for three US manufacturers of natural soda ash produced from trona deposits in Green River, Wyoming, the trade name for sodium carbonate Na2CO3, is an ess ...
*
Eti Soda, Turkey
*
Kazan Soda Elektrik
The Kazan Soda Elektrik, full name Kazan Soda Elektrik Üretim A.Ş., is a chemical industry and electric energy company in Ankara
Province, Turkey producing natural soda ash and baking soda from trona. The company' is a subsidiary of Ciner Holdi ...
, Turkey
*
Church & Dwight - Green River Mine
*
Intrepid Potash
Intrepid Potash, Inc. (), based in Denver, Colorado, is a fertilizer manufacturer. The company is the largest producer of potassium chloride, also known as muriate of potash, in the United States. It owns three mines, all in the Western U.S., ne ...
*
Simplot
The J. R. Simplot Company (commonly referred to as Simplot) is an agribusiness company headquartered in Boise, Idaho.
History
Simplot was founded in 1929 by 20-year-old John Richard Simplot near the agricultural community of Declo in south ...
See also
*
Natron
*
Nahcolite
Nahcolite is a soft, colourless or white carbonate mineral with the composition of sodium bicarbonate ( Na H C O3) also called thermokalite. It crystallizes in the monoclinic system.
Nahcolite was first described in 1928 for an occurrence in a ...
*
Shortite
Shortite is a sodium-calcium carbonate mineral, with the chemical formula Na2Ca2(CO3)3. It was discovered by J. J. Fahey in well cuttings from the Green River Formation, Sweetwater County, Wyoming, US, and was named to honor Maxwell N. Short (18 ...
*
Sodium sesquicarbonate
Sodium sesquicarbonate (systematic name: trisodium hydrogendicarbonate) Na3H(CO3)2 is a double salt of sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate (NaHCO3 · Na2CO3), and has a needle-like crystal structure. However, the term is also applied to an e ...
*
Thermonatrite
Thermonatrite is a naturally occurring evaporite mineral form of sodium carbonate, Na2CO3·H2O.
It was first described in 1845. Its name is from the Greek θερμός ''thermos'', "heat", plus ''natron'', because it may be a dehydration product ...
References
{{reflist
Sodium minerals
Carbonate minerals
Monoclinic minerals
Minerals in space group 15
Evaporite
Luminescent minerals