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Felsőbányaite mineral

Felsőbányaite is the hydrated aluminium hydroxysulfate mineral with ideal formula Al4(SO4)(OH)10·4H2O. The September 2026 IMA list records it as grandfathered, with 1854 in the original-description year column. This owner denotes the mineral species, not elemental aluminium, a bulk mine-water precipitate, or the separately listed hydrobasaluminite. Farkas and Pertlik (1997) characterized natural type-locality felsőbányaite and a Sussex specimen called basaluminite by chemistry and single-crystal diffraction, interpreting the latter as a microcrystalline variety of the former. Their reported monoclinic P21 structure contains aluminium-oxygen layers; beam-induced dehydration reduced structural accuracy, and hydrogen positions were not determined. Later work questions whether poorly ordered materials called basaluminite in acid-mine-drainage studies are structurally equivalent to the crystalline mineral. The 2017 Carrero article's accessible abstract flags this uncertainty; its detailed measurements are not curated here. Nomenclatural synonymy alone therefore does not transfer every basaluminite experiment to this owner. Microbial precipitation, extraction, recovery and industrial deployment are unassessed for this record. No criticality designation is inherited from aluminium.

Sources & References

  1. ima_2026_09: IMA-CNMNC. The New IMA List of Minerals, September 2026. PDF page 68, Felsőbányaite row; page 1 defines grandfathered status and the year column; page 97 separately lists hydrobasaluminite.
    https://cnmnc.units.it/files/editor/IMA_Master_List_(2026-09).pdf (accessed 2026-10-15)
  2. farkas1997: Farkas L and Pertlik F (1997). Crystal structure determinations of felsöbányaite and basaluminite, Al4(SO4)(OH)10·4H2O. Acta Mineralogica-Petrographica 38, 5–15. Complete original in the institutional volume PDF, pages 6–16; Experimental, Tables 2–4, Figures 1–3, Discussion and Conclusion.
    https://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/39416/1/mineralogica_038.pdf (accessed 2026-10-15)
  3. carrero2017_boundary: Carrero et al. (2017). The nanocrystalline structure of basaluminite, an aluminum hydroxide sulfate from acid mine drainage. American Mineralogist 102, 2381–2389. Publisher abstract inspected for its explicit structural-equivalence caveat only; full methods and figures not inspected.
    https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2017-6059 (accessed 2026-10-15)

Curation History

Timestamp Curator Action Summary
2026-10-15T06:07:55.713537+00:00 codex (GPT-6; codex) CREATE Added the mineral identity from dated IMA nomenclature and primary natural-crystal characterization, retaining measurement limitations and restricting transfer from poorly ordered basaluminite studies.

Record source: data/records/felsobanyaite.yaml