Metatyuyamunite mineral

Metatyuyamunite is the calcium uranyl vanadate mineral Ca(UO2)2(VO4)2·3H2O. The September 2026 IMA-CNMNC list recognizes it with grandfathered status G; 1954 is the original-description year, not an IMA approval accession. This mineral-species owner is distinct from tyuyamunite, carnotite, the broader carnotite group, elemental uranium or vanadium and the mixed sandstone used experimentally. Glasauer et al. (2022) identified metatyuyamunite, written meta- tyuyamunite in the paper, together with fritzscheite in the starting natural uranium-vanadium sandstone. After incubation with living Shewanella putrefaciens CN32, metatyuyamunite was still identified by X-ray diffraction in the final fine fraction together with K-carnotite. Figure 1b and sections 3.1 and 3.3 support presence in both assemblages; they do not quantify its surviving mass or prove that the same crystals persisted. Section 4.1 explicitly states that the two starting minerals could not be observed separately during incubation. Thus the mixed-ore vanadium reduction cannot be assigned specifically to metatyuyamunite, and residual detection does not demonstrate complete resistance to transformation. Section 3.2 names tyuyamunite as a carnotite precursor while the conclusion instead names fritzscheite; neither statement establishes a resolved phase-specific pathway. 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 mixed-assemblage occurrence are curated without a mineral-specific mechanism assertion. There is no supported pure-metatyuyamunite rate, recovered-product yield or industrial- deployment claim here. No criticality designation is inherited from its constituent elements.

Record source: data/records/metatyuyamunite.yaml