Aluminite
sulfate mineral
Aluminite is a hydrous aluminium sulfate mineral with formula: Al2SO4(OH)4·7H2O. It is an earthy white to gray-white monoclinic mineral which almost never exhibits crystal form. It forms botryoidal to mammillary clay-like masses. It has a very soft Mohs hardness of 1–2 and a specific gravity of 1.66–1.82.
It forms in clay and lignite deposits as an oxidation product of pyrite and marcasite along with aluminium silicates. It also occurs in volcanic sublimates, in native sulfur deposits and rarely in caves. It occurs in association with basaluminite, gibbsite, epsomite, gypsum, celestine, dolomite and goethite.
It was first described in 1807 from Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany and named for its aluminium content. It is also known as alley stone, halite and websterite (named after Orcadian geologist Thomas Webster).
Aluminite is used by tile and masonry workers to reduce the setting time of mortars.
“Aluminite” enters the record as sulfate mineral. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Aluminite, sulfate and mineral can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aluminite” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.