Seminario “Geochemical model of impurities on the gypsum crystals surface at Naica mining complex”

Resumen

Naica mine is located in a semi-desertic region at the central-south of Chihuahua State. The Cave of Swords was discovered in 1910 and 90 years later the Giant Crystals cave. It is expected that since the discovery of each cave the human presence has changed the microclimatic conditions, resulting in the deterioration of the crystals and the deposition of impurities on gypsum surfaces. As a contribution to the clarification of the mentioned issues, the present work refers to the use of synchrotron radiation for the identification of phases on these surfaces. All the experiments were performed at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), Elettra Sincrotrone and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) and radiography-aided X-ray diffraction (RAXRD) experiments were performed at beamline 11-3 (SSRL). X-Ray micro-fluorescence (µ-SXRF) and micro-X-ray absorption (µ-XANES) were measured at beamlines: 2-3 (SSRL), 10-1L (Elettra), ID21 (ESRF).