Ye'elimite is the naturally occurring form of

anhydrous A substance is anhydrous if it contains no water. Many processes in chemistry can be impeded by the presence of water; therefore, it is important that water-free reagents and techniques are used. In practice, however, it is very difficult to achie ...

calcium sulfoaluminate, . It gets its name from Har Ye'elim in

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

in the Hatrurim Basin west of the

Dead Sea The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...

where it was first found in nature by

Shulamit Gross Shulamit Gross (; lived 1 October 1923 – 19 Sep 2012) was an Israeli mineralogist and geologist who studied the Hatrurim Formation. Biography Gross was born as Shulamit Lifszyc in Grodno, Poland (today, Hrodna, Belarus). She was the daughte ...

, an Israeli mineralogist and geologist who studied the

Hatrurim Formation The Hatrurim Formation or Mottled Zone is a geologic formation with outcrops all around the Dead Sea Basin: in the Negev Desert in Israel, in the Judaean Desert on the West Bank, and in western Jordan. It includes late Cretaceous to Eocene aged im ...

.Handbook of Mineralogy
/ref>
/ref> The mineral is

cubic Cubic may refer to: Science and mathematics * Cube (algebra), "cubic" measurement * Cube, a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex ** Cubic crystal system, a crystal system w ...

, with 16 formula units per

unit cell In geometry, biology, mineralogy and solid state physics, a unit cell is a repeating unit formed by the vectors spanning the points of a lattice. Despite its suggestive name, the unit cell (unlike a unit vector In mathematics, a unit vector i ...

, and a cell dimension of 1.8392 nm, and is readily detected and quantified in mixtures by powder

x-ray diffraction X-ray diffraction is a generic term for phenomena associated with changes in the direction of X-ray beams due to interactions with the electrons around atoms. It occurs due to elastic scattering, when there is no change in the energy of the waves. ...

Occurrence in cement

It is alternatively called "Klein's Compound", after Alexander Klein of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, who experimented with sulfoaluminate

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 mi ...

s around 1960, although it was first described in 1957 by Ragozina. Ye'elimite is most commonly encountered as a constituent of sulfoaluminate cements, in which it is manufactured on the million-tonne-per-annum scale. It also occasionally occurs adventitiously in Portland-type cements.A E Moore, ''Cement Technology'', 7 (1976) pp 85, 134 It is thus an anhydrous mineral of the cement clinker whose idealized oxide formula is also written in the

cement chemist notation Cement chemist notation (CCN) was developed to simplify the formulas cement chemists use on a daily basis. It is a shorthand way of writing the chemical formula of oxides of calcium, silicon, and various metals. Abbreviations of oxides The main ...

(CCN). On hydration in the presence of calcium and sulfate ions, it forms the insoluble, fibrous mineral ettringite, which provides the strength in sulfoaluminate concretes, monosulfoaluminate, and

aluminium hydroxide Aluminium hydroxide, , is found as the mineral gibbsite (also known as hydrargillite) and its three much rarer polymorphs: bayerite, doyleite, and nordstrandite. Aluminium hydroxide is amphoteric, i.e., it has both basic and acidic propert ...

. It is manufactured by heating the appropriate quantities of finely-ground

alumina Aluminium oxide (or aluminium(III) oxide) is a chemical compound of aluminium and oxygen with the chemical formula . It is the most commonly occurring of several aluminium oxides, and specifically identified as aluminium oxide. It is commonly ...

calcium carbonate Calcium carbonate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is a common substance found in Rock (geology), rocks as the minerals calcite and aragonite, most notably in chalk and limestone, eggshells, gastropod shells, shellfish skel ...

and

calcium sulfate Calcium sulfate (or calcium sulphate) is an inorganic salt with the chemical formula . It occurs in several hydrated forms; the anhydrous state (known as anhydrite) is a white crystalline solid often found in evaporite deposits. Its dihydrate ...

to between 1100 and 1300 °C, preferably in the presence of small quantities of fluxing materials, such as Fe₂O₃. On heating above 1350 °C, ye'elimite begins to decompose to

tricalcium aluminate Tricalcium aluminate Ca3Al2O6, often formulated as 3CaO·Al2O3 to highlight the proportions of the oxides from which it is made, is the most basic of the calcium aluminates. It does not occur in nature, but is an important mineral phase in Port ...

calcium oxide Calcium oxide (formula: Ca O), commonly known as quicklime or burnt lime, is a widely used chemical compound. It is a white, caustic, alkaline, crystalline solid at room temperature. The broadly used term '' lime'' connotes calcium-containing ...

sulfur dioxide Sulfur dioxide (IUPAC-recommended spelling) or sulphur dioxide (traditional Commonwealth English) is the chemical compound with the formula . It is a colorless gas with a pungent smell that is responsible for the odor of burnt matches. It is r ...

and

oxygen Oxygen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group (periodic table), group in the periodic table, a highly reactivity (chemistry), reactive nonmetal (chemistry), non ...

References

Aluminates Aluminium minerals Calcium minerals Cement Concrete Sulfate minerals Cubic minerals Minerals in space group 214 {{sulfate-mineral-stub

Occurrence in cement

See also

References