Hydrothermal reaction of albite and a sodium aluminosilicate glass: A solid-state NMR study

Abstract

We present here a solid-state NMR study of the structure and chemical composition of the products and mechanisms of the reaction of crystalline low albite and a glass of nearly albite composition with aqueous solutions of pH from 1 to 11 at 250°C. For the crystalline albite, there are no detectable bulk or surface structural changes due to aqueous attack, consistent with the idea that both cation exchange and disruption of the aluminosilicate framework occur only near the mineral/solution interface and that the hydrated surface layer, if it exists, is not more than about 30 Å thick. This reaction occurs by solution/reprecipitation, and its rate decreases with increasing solution pH, supporting the idea that the dissolution of feldspar is initiated by cation-exchange. For the glass, the reaction proceeds by cation exchange of protons for Na +, incorporation of molecular water into the bulk glass, and a small amount of depolymerization of the aluminosilicate framework in the interior of the glass. Cation exchange becomes less important with increasing solution pH. The incorporation of molecular water and cation-exchange cause structural changes in the glass via solidstate adjustment without dissolution/reprecipitation. The large cations in the hydrated glass (Na and K) probably have a shell of water molecules around them, with a maximum average coordination number of six. The secondary phases formed from both albite and the glass are often amorphous and can be well characterized by NMR. The compositional and structural variations of the amorphous phases are important factors in these reactions and cannot be ignored in theoretical models of aluminosilicate dissolution. As expected, the aluminum coordination in the secondary phases changes from six-fold to four-fold as the solution pH increases.