Cryolite

It is used in the reduction ("smelting") of aluminium, in pest control, and as a dye.

History

Cryolite was first described in 1798 by Danish veterinarian and physician Peter Christian Abildgaard (1740–1801), from rock samples obtained from local Inuit who used the mineral for washing their hides; the actual source of the ore was later discovered in 1806 by the explorer Karl Ludwig Giesecke. who found the deposit at Ivigtut (old spelling) and nearby Arsuk Fjord, Southwest Greenland, where it was extracted by Øresund Chemical Industries. The name is derived from the Greek words cryos (Greek: κρύος, lit. 'frost'), and lithos (Greek: λίθος, lit. 'stone').

The Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company used large amounts of cryolite to make caustic soda and fluorine compounds, including hydrofluoric acid at its Natrona, Pennsylvania, works, and at its integrated chemical plant in Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania, during the 19th and 20th centuries.

It was historically used as an ore of aluminium and later in the electrolytic processing of the aluminium-rich oxide ore bauxite (itself a combination of aluminium oxide minerals such as gibbsite, boehmite and diaspore). The difficulty of separating aluminium from oxygen in the oxide ores was overcome by the use of cryolite as a flux to dissolve the oxide mineral(s).

Pure cryolite itself melts at 1012 °C (1285 K), and it can dissolve the aluminium oxides sufficiently well to allow easy extraction of the aluminium by electrolysis. Substantial energy is still needed for both heating the materials and the electrolysis, but it is much more energy-efficient than melting the oxides themselves. As natural cryolite is now too rare to be used for this purpose, synthetic sodium aluminium fluoride is produced from the common mineral fluorite.

In 1940 before entering World War II, the United States became involved with protecting the world's largest cryolite mine in Ivittuut, Greenland from falling into Nazi Germany's control.

In 1987 the main mining in Ivittuut was closed. According to economist Arindam Banerjee, exploitation of cryolite in Greenland contributed nearly 54 billion euros to Danish economy, though this claim has been strongly disputed.