Alain Meunier Livres

This book represents the most comprehensive work on clay minerals to date, covering fundamental concepts and general principles applicable to real geological contexts. It aims to provide answers to a wide range of questions for students, advanced learners, and casual researchers alike. The extensive knowledge presented is particularly crucial now, as the study of clays—one of the most abundant minerals at the Earth's surface—faces declining interest among students and universities. The need for such an encyclopedic resource is more pressing than ever, especially as Earth sciences experience a downturn in popularity. The relevance of environmental studies, focusing on materials involved in biological activity, has surged. Human progress, from the scientific age to the current post-industrial era, has increasingly relied on Earth's surface resources. The rising global population has led to a non-linear demand for these resources. In the pre-industrial era, agriculture and industry were primarily about basic subsistence, fluctuating between years of abundance and scarcity. This context underscores the importance of understanding clay minerals and their role in our environment and resource management today.

We present a comprehensive collection of insights from mineral scientists accumulated over decades. Illite, a relatively recent discovery, plays a crucial role in geological processes such as weathering, sedimentation, and burial. It is the primary potassium mineral among silicates in surface environments. Potassium is the only alkaline metal bound in silicate structures during the significant chemical changes of weathering. This environment features strong chemical segregation, where silicon and aluminum become resistant components of silicate rocks, while iron forms oxides and potassium remains as stable clay illite. Silicon and aluminum subsequently form smectites and kaolinite, while sodium, calcium, and magnesium are leached from solids as dissolved ionic species. Calcium and magnesium can re-enter solid minerals through carbonate precipitation, whereas sodium contributes to the salinity of seawater. Studying illite has been challenging due to its fine grain size (2 µm in diameter), typical of all clays. Its exploration awaited the advent of effective X-ray detection methods, allowing for the investigation of clays that were initially defined by the resolving power of optical microscopes (2 µm). The study of illite has evolved alongside advancements in X-ray diffraction techniques.

Research on issues relating to nuclear waste storage plays an important role in contributing to finding good solutions to a problem that concerns mankind's future, predicting the durability of engineered barriers and determining the kinetics of alteration processes. The latter is now one of the vital questions in the scientific community concerned with clay minerals and hydrosilicate gels. The 20 papers published in this volume bring together the experience of specialists on topics such as hydrosilicate gels and early mineral phase crystallization, clay mineral reactions and crystallochemistry of clay minerals. The contributions are of world-wide interest, and will help to stimulate future research and analysis in this field.