Carbonate-bearing ceramic bodies are frequently used in the manufacture of bricks, roofing tiles, wall and floor tiles, pottery and tableware. During the firing of these bodies, clinopyroxene is usually formed in very small crystals, 1-5 µm in diameter or less. In the literature this phase is generally referred to as diopside, but no quantitative data are available. In order to chemically characterize these ‘ceramic’ pyroxenes, nine industrial products were analysed by XRF and XRD (bulk sample) and SEM-EDS (fracture surface). Quantitative ZAF analyses of pyroxene crystals showed a certain chemical variability: SiO2 35-50%, Al2O3 9-20%, Fe2O3 1-15%, MgO 3-14%, and CaO 16-25%. Sodium, K and Ti are always <1%, while ferrous iron is always <0.2% in the bulk sample. Overall, ‘ceramic’ clinopyroxenes present wide chemical analogies with ‘fassaite’, e.g. the abundance of aluminium and ferric iron, and the excess ofwollastonite molecules with respect to the diopside-hedenbergite series.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.