PARSETTENSITE, WHAT IS IT? AND THE PRICE OF LITHIUM IN NC

 

A Sept. 29 Facebook post said, Asheville North Carolina Sits on top of Billions of dollars of LITHIUM. Is this a coincidence that hurricane (Helene) destroyed all that area? This is the outcome of a well orchestrated man-made disaster, weather modification and geoengineering. Just hold that thought for a bit.

Albemarle Corp. is working to reopen and expand the Kings Mountain lithium mine in NC. Photo courtesy of North Carolina Public Radio, WNNC and WFAE.

Well, it was another winter wonderland here today in the Northland although it lacked the bitter cold of the last storm. Otherwise, all is really quiet at the ranch---really, really quiet. But quiet days are made for dark hot coffee, playing with minerals, feeding birds, and topping off the afternoon with a cool frosty IPA. Today the solitude was broken up by Minerals Live with Alfredo Petrov. Boy, that guy has had a traveling life. I believe today was the 96^th edition of Minerals Live and I have been able to tune in to most and enjoy the fantastic showcase of mineral collectors, dealers, artists, etc. Thank you, Brian, Eloïse, and Raquel.

The talk of minerals and the otherwise quietness around here made me miss, even more, my winter sojourns to Tucson for the warm weather and the Shows. So much, in fact, I rummaged around and made some reservations for next winter and the Tucson 2026 Show.

In examining a few acquisitions from last year, I ran across a box purchased from Shannon’s Minerals (ex-Mineralogical Research Company). I remember that I was totally unfamiliar with the mineral parsettensite but noted it was collected from the famous Foote mine in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. The mine is a well-known lithium pegmatite mine and I love pegmatite minerals, especially one with a chemical formula about a mile long: (K,Na,Ca)_7.5(Mn,Mg)₄₉Si₇₂O₁₆₈(OH)₅₀·nH₂O.

The Foote property started out as a gold mine ~1834 and produced the metal until closing ~ 1900. During that time span, ~1880, cassiterite, an ore of tin, was discovered and mined and the area became known as the Carolina Tin Belt (King, 1955). Gem spodumene (LiAlS₂O₈) was produced in the late 1800s and in the mid- 1930s commercial production of lithium from the spodumene commenced and cassiterite mining ceased. Lithium was mined until 1996 when mine owners discovered brine technology for producing lithium was less expensive than hard rock mining. With the closure of the mine a few reclamation projects started and that included at least one park. However, interest in mining remained and the land went through several ownerships until 2015 when Abermarle Corporation acquired the property and begin to prepare the old mine for production. On September 12, 2023, CBS Television reported (https://www.cbs17.com/news/north-carolina-news/) that “a $90 million agreement to purchase lithium from Albemarle, based in Charlotte, will increase domestic production of lithium for the nation’s battery supply chain, the Pentagon said in a news release.  The agreement under the Defense Production Act will help reopen the Kings Mountain lithium mine , which will support the manufacturing of about 1.2 million electric vehicles annually.” Production is slated to commence in late 2026. In 2024 (I think) Albemarle announced the “U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a nearly $150 million grant to Albemarle as part of the first set of projects funded by the President's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and the electrical grid and for materials and components currently imported from other countries.” Today (early March 2025), I don’t have the slightest idea if the grants from the federal government survived the recent slashing of grants and contracts.

The Foote Mine is a large open pit mine situated on perhaps the largest bedrock lithium deposit in the United States (Horton and others, 1981). According to MinDat, the granite pegmatite, previously mined for lithium, tin, beryllium, niobium, tantalum, and “mica,” is hosted in the Cherryville Quartz Monzonite, a Mississippian age batholith in the Carolina Piedmont Belt.  The Mine has produced 161 mineral species including 15 Types, many of which are rare phosphates.

Brown crystals of parsettensite scattered among crystals of quartz, pyrite and albite. Width FOV ~1.6 cm.

Scattered platy crystals of brown parsettensite. Note pyrite crystals, many of which are cubes. Width FOV ~7 mm.

Scattered sub- millimeter crystals on "sparkly" albite. 

Notice the translucent nature of these tiny crystals.

The best view of the platy crystals arranged perpendicular to the matrix.

At time the tiny brown crystals seem to "gather" in spherules. At least these micro balls are scattered around. 

The unknown.

Parsettensite is a product of a manganese-rich parent rock that has been subjected to metamorphism. Crystals usually are sub-millimeter in size and occur in some shade of brownish—yellow or honey yellow, copper red, or light brown. Exact hardness seems unknown but Webmineral estimates ~1.5 (Mohs). The mainly micro crystals have a sub-metallic luster, may be massive but usually are micaceous or platy octahedral sheet Mn-rich silicates (Eggleton and Guggenheim, 1994) situated on a crystalline matrix, usually albite and/or quartz, with pyrite and apatite. Clusters of these tiny crystals often appear to form spherules. Parsettensite is an uncommon mineral with the Type Locality in a former manganese mine in the Parsettens Alp, Switzerland.

As for the initial paragraph of this article, it is hard for me to believe but there are nut cases out there who believe the government can manipulate the weather. Unfortunately, the feds must then take valuable time to try and put these vicious rumors to rest. My mother was fond of stating that you can’t fix stupid.  

REFERENCES CITED

Eggleton, R.A. and S. Guggenheim, 1994, The use of electron optical methods to determine the crystal structure of a modulated phyllosilicate: Parsettensite: American Mineralogist, vol. 78, nos. 5-6.

Horton, J.W., Jr., and Butler, J.R., 1981, Geology and mining history of the Kings Mountain belt—A summary and status report: In Horton, J.W., Jr., Butler, J.R., and Milton, D.J., eds. Geological investigations of the Kings Mountain belt and adjacent areas in the Carolinas. Carolina Geological Society Field Trip Guidebook 1981. Columbia, South Carolina Geological Survey.

King, P. B., 1955, A geologic section across the southern Appalachians: An outline of the geology in the segment in Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina, In Russell, R. J., ed., Guides to southeastern geology. Boulder Colorado, Geological Society of America.

DONNAYITE-(Y): NO HISTORICAL OR POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE

 

Donnayite-Y, what a mineral! Wikipedia, that fount of all knowledge, describes (accessed February 2025) donnayite as having no historical or political significance, no common uses, no uses in fabrication of products, and most people do not even know it exists. Now, that is quite a buildup for any mineral and is one reason that I purchased the lonely perky box wallowing in a dusty tray.

The Fall of 2024’ was a busy time of year for me as after the move from Colorado Springs to Wisconsin I was valiantly trying to unpack my mineral specimens, along with numerous boxes of “household” you name it”. I was hoping that the area would offer a few rock and mineral shows that would break up my tedium of unpacking—but not much luck in that area. However, I did notice that Madison, home to both the UW Badgers and the seat of the Wisconsin government, was holding a show in late November. When the appointed weekend arrived the ole car was heading east to the Madison Gem and Mineral Club exhibits and show.

Madison Gem and Mineral Club Show 2024

I found several items with the show to be interesting, not the least of which was the $10 parking fee in addition to the gate fee plus the gasoline to and from Madison. Those expenses did not seem like a whiz bang deal for a non-Tucson show. However, rockhounds seemed to be hungry for a "show" and the event was packed on Saturday. 

I also found that the Midwest shows host a different variety of vendors than the Rocky Mountain shows. And that is understandable as the cratonic rocks of the Midwest are primarily Paleozoic and sedimentary in origin. As a result, vendors hustled “lots of” fossils, many of which were quite beautiful, tables of cab jewelry (few faceted pieces), slabs/hunks of polished limestone, plus a variety of agates, or at least chalcedony/flint nodules with lines. However, vendors selling “hard rock” minerals were very scarce, and almost non-existent. As a result, I purchased only a single specimen, that being the aforementioned donnayite-Y.

Other than the lonely perky box previously noted, donnayite-Y has, at least to me, an interesting chemical composition: three water molecules, six carbonate anions (negative charge), and four cations (positive charge)—sodium, calcium, strontium, yttrium. In fact, since yttrium is a rare earth element (REE) the Y stuck on the end of the written composition is, wait on it, an indication that yttrium is present: NaCaSr₃Y(CO₃)₆--3H₂0. It seemed to me that any mineral with yttrium ought to be worth a couple of bucks bucks. 

The previous owner of this specimen had a ed arrow pointing to this apparent stack and identifying such as donnyaite. Width FOV ~7 mm.

Donnayite-Y, is not only an “insignificant” mineral but one that seems quite difficult for a rockhound of my “quality” to identify. MinDat noted that donnayite-Y is often yellow in color but ranges to colorless, white, grey or perhaps reddish brown if included with hematite. The crystals are quite small in the .5 to 1.0 or 2.0 mm range, and soft (~ 3.0 Mohs). MinDat, and other mineral descriptive publications, seem to heavily rely on barrel-shaped, stacked layers as the major element in identification. Unfortunately, it seems that in many specimens donnayite-Y is platy or columnar or coarsely granular in appearance and then becomes even more difficult for me to identify. The material identified by the previous owner points to a apparent stack of small plates; however, I would not bet the farm that the ID is correct. Would I regret a incorrect ID? Maybe, but I have spent too many career years trying to paint everything in black and white and good and bad and right or wrong. Now I try to live a life of calm knowing that perhaps I will not succeed. Bit it gnaws on me that there is not any chance of success unless I try just one more time! As my hero Mark Twain once said, “the secret of getting ahead is getting started.” So now I am looking for a new specimen of donnayite-Y!

The specimen I purchased came from one of the quarries at Mount St. Hilaire probably the Poudrette quarry located in the East Hill suite of the Mont Saint-Hilaire alkaline complex (igneous rocks containing a high concentration of sodium and potassium, more so than in other igneous rocks and therefore containing feldspathoid minerals [lots of nepheline]) is one of the world’s most prolific mineral localities, with a species list exceeding 365 (MinDat now shows 433 valid minerals). No other locality in Canada, and very few in the world have produced as many species. With a current total of 50 type minerals (MinDat now lists 71 Type Minerals), the quarry has also produced more new species than any other locality in Canada, and accounts for about 25 per cent of all new species discovered in Canada.

Above is taken directly from the following:

GEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF CANADA, MINERALOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF CANADA, 2006 JOINT ANNUAL MEETING MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC

FIELD TRIP 4A: GUIDEBOOK, MINERALOGY AND GEOLOGY OF THE POUDRETTE QUARRY, MONT SAINT-HILAIRE, QUÉBEC

Charles Normand & Peter Tarassoff

Microsoft Word - GuidebookMSHfinal2-JP2.doc (mcgill.ca)