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'Wollastonite' is a calcium inosilicate mineral (CaSiO₃) that may contain small amounts of iron, magnesium, and manganese substituting for calcium. It is usually white. It forms when impure limestone or dolostone is subjected to high temperature and pressure sometimes in the presence of silica-bearing fluids as in skarns or contact metamorphic rocks. Associated minerals include garnets, vesuvianite, diopside, tremolite, epidote, plagioclase feldspar, and calcite. It is named after the English chemist and mineralogist William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828).
Some of the properties that make wollastonite so useful are its high brightness and whiteness, low moisture and oil absorption, and low volatile content. Wollastonite is used primarily in ceramics, friction products (brakes and clutches), metalmaking, paint filler, and plastics.
Despite its chemical similarity to the compositional spectrum of the pyroxene group of minerals - where magnesium and iron substitution for calcium ends with diopside and hedenbergite respectively - it is structurally very different, with a third SiO₄ tetrahedron^[1] in the linked chain (as opposed to two in the pyroxenes).

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Production trends

See also

References

Production trends

In 2005, China was the top producer of wollastonite with atleast 50% world share followed by India and the USA, reports the British Geological Survey.
In the United States, wollastonite is mined in Willsboro, New York and Gouverneur, New York. Deposits have also been mined commercially in North Western Mexico.

See also

★ List of minerals

★ List of minerals named after people

References

1. Deer, Howie & Zussman (1966) ''An Introduction to the Rock Forming Minerals'', Longman 528pp + xii, ISBN 0-582-44210-9


★ Hurlbut, Cornelius S.; Klein, Cornelis, 1985, Manual of Mineralogy, 20th ed., ISBN 0-471-80580-7

★ Mindat

★ Webmineral

★ Mineral galleries

★ Oxford University MSDS sheet