Cryolite is an uncommon mineral of very limited natural distribution. Mostly considered a one locality mineral, although there are a few other minor localities, it was only found in large quantities on the west coast of Greenland. Now it is too rare to be used for this purpose and sodium aluminum fluoride is produced artificially to fill the void.
Cryolite (sodium hexafluoroaluminate) is an uncommon mineral .It is a colorless monoclinic crystal; It slightly disintegrable inwards the water, and the water solution shows the acidity. When mixed with sulfuric acid, it will be decomposed with the caustic hydrogen fluoride. It constitutes mainly habituated for commingle for aluminum production, pesticide, and for field glass, enamel, resin and rubber industries as well. It is translucent to transparent with a very low refractive index of about 1.34, which is very close to that of water; thus if immersed in water, cryolite becomes essentially invisible.
The colourless material seemingly disappears in water due to the proximity of their refractive indices.
Historically, cryolite was used as an aluminium ore and later in the electrolytic processing of the aluminium ore bauxite.
It was used as a solvent of the aluminum rich ore, bauxite, which is a combination of aluminum oxides such as gibbsite, boehmite and diaspore. It is very difficult to remove atoms of aluminum from atoms of oxygen which is necessary in order to produce aluminum metal.
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