Clay minerals in volcanic ejecta

Minerals in Volcanic Ash 1: Primary Minerals and Volcanic Glass

Volcanic ash is fragments of magma, and consists of minerals and volcanic glass. These materials in the ash can provide important information on the nature of the magma, because chemical compositions of magma usually show distinct features in each volcano, and because assemblages and compositions of minerals reflect their host melt. Using assemblages and chemical compositions of minerals and gl...

Clay Minerals and Catalysis

More than half a century ago, Irish physicist John Desmond Bernal and Swiss geochemist Victor M. Goldschmidt independently proposed that clay minerals may have played an important role in prebiotic synthesis (Bernal 1949; Goldschmidt 1952). I concur that mineral catalysis must have had a central role in prebiotic synthesis because most uncatalyzed reactions start from simple precursors like hyd...

Clay Minerals: Adsorbophysical Properties

The structure and features of surfaces of clay minerals (kaolin, montmorillonite, etc) have an important scientific and practical value. On the surface the interrelation of processes at electronic, atomic and molecular levels is realized. Availability of mineral surface to external influences opens wide scientific and technical opportunities of use of the surface phenomena, so the research of c...

Fluidized Impact Ejecta and Volcanic Blast Surge

Introduction: Pyroclastic surges and impact ejecta in volatile-rich environment are dilute suspension currents in which particles are carried in turbulent flows under the influence of gravity. They have a lot in common, even if historically studied by different branches of geosciences with a few exceptions [1-3]. It seems reasonable to use impact cratering approaches in volcanology and vice ver...

Clay and non-clay minerals in the pharmaceutical industry