Hartlepool Headland
Sylvite, also called sylvine, is potassium chloride (KCl) in natural mineral form. It is colorless to white with shades of yellow and red due to inclusions, has a hardness of around 2.5 on Moh’s Scale...
Read More ...
Comment here if you like this plugin.
May – Sylvite
Sylvite, also called sylvine, is potassium chloride (KCl) in natural mineral form. It is colorless to white with shades of yellow and red due to inclusions, has a hardness of around 2.5 on Moh’s Scale and has a distinctively bitter salty taste. Sylvite is a chemical sedimentary rock, laid down through the evaporation of sea-water such deposits are collectively termed evaporites.
Locally, there are many hundreds of metres of Permian evaporite deposits, both sylvite and rock salt (halite), beneath Teesside and North Yorks which were deposited around 260 million years ago when a sea known as the Zechsteain evaporated. Middlesbrough formerly fostered a thriving salt industry, and sylvite (for use as fertiliser) and halite (essential for keeping roads ice-free in winter) are still mined locally at the Cleveland Potash mine, Boulby which descends over a kilometre beneath the surface making it Europe’s deepest mine.