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.