Clays and Other Industrial Mineral Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Industrial minerals form an exceptionally varied group of raw materials that cover virtually all needs of modern human life, although their presence is often invisible. Industrial minerals can be defined as those minerals that, due to their physical and/or chemical properties, are used in industrial processes. From a compositional point of view, industrial mineral materials include both silicates (e.g., zeolites and clays) and nonsilicates (e.g., chromite and barite). No doubt, it can be said that clay minerals and clays, whether in their natural state or modified, are outstanding materials in the field of industrial mineral materials. They are abundant, relatively cheap to obtain, and mostly friendly from an industrial and health viewpoint.

Clay is a textural term referring to natural rock, sediment, and/or alteration products mainly made up of very fine-grained clay mineral phyllosilicates. Clay minerals, whether natural or synthetic, show economically interesting physical and chemical properties directly related to their structure and composition. Both the layer charge and small particle size of the clay minerals give place to suitable properties such as plasticity, sorption, rheology, and ion exchange, among others.

Taking into account their origin, clay minerals can be detrital and authigenic. Detrital clay minerals are inherited and thus reflect the sediment source (provenance). Authigenic clay minerals are, in a broad sense, “formed or generated in place”, whether related to soil processes, sedimentary deposition or diagenesis; in addition, authigenic clays are also formed under low-grade metamorphic conditions and/or the influence of hydrothermal events.

When they are classified as industrial minerals, a distinction is made between common clays, which usually consist of an association of several clay minerals, and special clays, which are typically formed of just one clay mineral and include kaolin, bentonite, sepiolite and palygorskite.

This collection aims to cover several broad objectives. It will be focused mainly on the study of industrial clays and clay minerals, but it also will deal with other industrial minerals. Approaches to these industrial mineral materials can be focused on: 1) geology, 2) mineralogy and geochemistry, 3) mineral genesis, 4) physical and physicochemical properties, 5) industrial and environmental applications, and 6) methods for their characterization.

We look forward to your submissions.

Prof. Dr. Manuel Pozo Rodríguez
Prof. Dr. Francisco Franco
Prof. Dr. Michael G. Stamatakis
Collection Editors

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