 | |
| Location | |
|---|---|
  Clara Pit | |
| Location | Oberwolfach |
| History | |
| Opened | 1898 |
| Active | Grube Clara |
| Closed | open |
| Owner | |
| Company | Sachtleben Bergbau GmbH und Co. KG |
The Clara Pit (German : Grube Clara) or Clara Mine is a working mine in Oberwolfach in the Black Forest in Germany in which the industrial minerals, baryte and fluorspar are mined.
The pit is well known because, to date, over 375 different minerals have been found here (as at November 2004), including several that are very rare. The portal of the mine is located in the upper part of the Rankach valley. The processing plant is near Wolfach-Kirnbach in the Kinzig valley. Since 1898, the Clara Pit has mined over 3 million tonnes of baryte and over 2 million tonnes of fluorspar. Baryte is used inter alia in sound attenuation, radiation protection and the deep mining industry. Fluorspar or fluorite is used in the metal industry as a plasticiser (e.g. in welding electrodes) in the glass and ceramics industry and in the chemical industry for the production of hydrofluoric acid.
The pit, which is operated by the firm of Sachtleben Bergbau is the last active mine of the many that were once worked in the Black Forest.
Its most common minerals are azurite, baryte, chrysocolla, claraite, cornwallite, fluorite, goethite, clinoclase, copper, malachite, pyrite, pyromorphite, mimetite, stolzite, silver und scorodite.
On the mineral tailings site of the Clara Pit in Wolfach-Kirnbach the various minerals may be looked for in separate raw mineral ore spoil heaps. [1]
In the Oberwolfach Mining and Mineral Museum in the village of Kirche over 200 minerals from the pit are displayed.
The fissures in the mine are part of the Friedrich Christian Herrensegen Fault Zone in the Black Forest Gneiss Complex.
The Clara Pit has given its name to the mineral, claraite and is also the type locality for the following minerals: agardite-(Ce), [2] arsenbrackebuschite, [3] arsenocrandallite, [4] arsenogorceixite, [5] arsenogoyazite, [6] bariopharmacosiderite, [7] benauite, [8] bismutostibiconite, [9] claraite, [10] cualstibite, [11] phosphofibrite, [12] phyllotungstite, [13] rankachite, [14] rhabdophane-(Ce), [15] tungstibite, [16] uranotungstite. [17]
The Black Forest is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is the source of the Danube and Neckar rivers.
Fluorite (also called fluorspar) is the mineral form of calcium fluoride, CaF2. It belongs to the halide minerals. It crystallizes in isometric cubic habit, although octahedral and more complex isometric forms are not uncommon.
Baryte, barite or barytes ( BARR-eyet, BAIR- or bə-RYTE-eez) is a mineral consisting of barium sulfate (BaSO4). Baryte is generally white or colorless, and is the main source of the element barium. The baryte group consists of baryte, celestine (strontium sulfate), anglesite (lead sulfate), and anhydrite (calcium sulfate). Baryte and celestine form a solid solution (Ba,Sr)SO4.
Witherite is a barium carbonate mineral, BaCO3, in the aragonite group. Witherite crystallizes in the orthorhombic system and virtually always is twinned. The mineral is colorless, milky-white, grey, pale-yellow, green, to pale-brown. The specific gravity is 4.3, which is high for a translucent mineral. It fluoresces light blue under both long- and short-wave UV light, and is phosphorescent under short-wave UV light.
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MiMa is a museum of mineralogy and mathematics in Oberwolfach, in the central Black Forest in southern Germany. The museum was opened on 30 January 2010 on the site of the mineral museum after a two-year conversion and expansion phase. It is operated jointly by the municipality of Oberwolfach, the Oberwolfach Society of the Friends of Minerals and Mining and the Mathematics Research Institute, Oberwolfach.
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