Fritzscheite mineral

Fritzscheite is the manganese uranyl vanadate mineral Mn2+(UO2)2(VO4)2·4H2O. The September 2026 IMA-CNMNC list recognizes it with grandfathered status G; 1865 is the original-description year, not an IMA approval accession. This mineral-species owner is distinct from elemental manganese, uranium and vanadium, dissolved salts, other carnotite-group species and mixed uranium ore. Glasauer et al. (2022) assigned fritzscheite and metatyuyamunite to the starting natural uranium-vanadium sandstone using diffraction and composition. The paper reports fritzscheite as Mn(UO2)2(V2O8)·H2O, which differs in hydration from the current IMA formula; this record retains the authors' phase assignment without silently equating that reported hydration with the canonical species formula. Following incubation with living Shewanella putrefaciens CN32, fritzscheite was not detected by bulk X-ray diffraction in the final fine fraction, which contained K-carnotite and metatyuyamunite. Figure 1b and sections 3.1 and 3.3 support this detection comparison, not a quantitative disappearance or extraction yield. Mn and Ba concentrations in the fine fraction were relatively unchanged, so absence of its diffraction signature does not establish removal of those elements. Section 4.1 states that individual starting- mineral behavior could not be resolved. The conclusion assigns fritzscheite-to-K-carnotite conversion through interlayer-cation replacement, whereas section 3.2 names tyuyamunite as a precursor; this record does not select a unique pathway or claim that microbial activity was necessary for that phase replacement. The shared laboratory experiment used 1.6 g of mixed sandstone in 80 mL defined medium with 10 mM sodium lactate and 1 mM phosphate, nitrogen degassing and autoclaving before inoculation, followed by an anoxic glovebox incubation extending to ten months. Treatments were in triplicate. These three mineral records refer to the same experiment, not independent replications. Bacteria-free solution controls were included, but do not isolate each phase's fate. The mixed-ore spectra support partial V reduction while U remained predominantly U(VI); results from the separate soluble-salt arm must not be transferred to this mineral. Dissolved U was low, rather than established to be exactly zero. Section 3.2 gives a V plateau time of 120 days while Figure 2 labels the time axes in hours, so no exact kinetic endpoint is adopted. The species identity and bounded starting-phase context are curated without a mineral-specific mechanism assertion. No complete dissolution, isolated product recovery or industrial deployment is demonstrated, and no criticality designation is inherited from constituent elements.

Record source: data/records/fritzscheite.yaml