Yusupovite mineral

Yusupovite is the sodium-zirconium silicate mineral species with ideal formula Na2Zr(Si6O15)(H2O)3, approved as IMA 2014-022. It is a monoclinic C2/m dimorph of orthorhombic elpidite, rather than another name for elpidite or elemental zirconium. Agakhanov and colleagues (2015) characterized natural grains in pegmatitic rock samples collected from the Darai-Pioz glacier moraine in Tajikistan. The grains occur within reedmergnerite-bearing material with quartz and other associated minerals; this is not a pure bulk ore or an in-place deposit survey. Powder and single-crystal diffraction, electron-microprobe analyses, microscopy and infrared spectroscopy support the assignment. The mean of ten point analyses and the refined site populations describe a compositionally substituted specimen containing K, Cs, Y and minor Hf, not an exact realization of the ideal end-member. Its water content was calculated from the structure refinement, yielding about 2.52 H2O per formula unit; it was not an independent direct water measurement. The authors' structural comparison with elpidite does not demonstrate a time-resolved transformation between the minerals. Their discussion of ion exchange and radionuclide containment is prospective and draws on separate, earlier elpidite experiments. No yusupovite exchange capacity, microbial mechanism, metal recovery, industrial deployment or constituent-derived criticality designation is assigned.

Record source: data/records/yusupovite.yaml