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V-Bor is a commercially packaged form of borax pentahydrate (Na2B4O7·5H2O). It is produced by the Searles Valley Minerals company from minerals mined at Searles Lake. It has most of the same uses as borax. It is also used to neutralize skins/hides in leather tanning, corrects boron deficiency in plants, reduces melting temperature in glass process, is a fire retardant in cellulose insulation, and is used to make a bleaching agent for home laundry. [1]
Borax, also known as sodium borate, sodium tetraborate, or disodium tetraborate, is an important boron compound, a mineral, and a salt of boric acid. Powdered borax is white, consisting of soft colorless crystals that dissolve in water. A number of closely related minerals or chemical compounds that differ in their crystal water content are referred to as borax, but the word is usually used to refer to the octahydrate. Commercially sold borax is partially dehydrated.
Searles Valley Minerals Inc. is a raw materials mining and production company based in Overland Park, Kansas. It is owned by the Indian company Nirma. It has major operations in the Searles Valley and in Trona, California where it is the town's largest employer. The company produces borax, boric acid, soda ash, salt cake and salt. It also owns the Trona Railway.
Searles Lake is an endorheic dry lake in the Searles Valley of the Mojave Desert, in northwestern San Bernardino County, California.
Kernite, also known as rasorite is a hydrated sodium borate hydroxide mineral with formula Na
2B
4O
6(OH)
2·3H
2O. It is a colorless to white mineral crystallizing in the monoclinic crystal system typically occurring as prismatic to acicular crystals or granular masses. It is relatively soft with Mohs hardness of 2.5 to 3 and light with a specific gravity of 1.91. It exhibits perfect cleavage and a brittle fracture.
Borates are the name for a large number of boron-containing oxyanions. The term "borates" may also refer to tetrahedral boron anions, or more loosely to chemical compounds which contain borate anions of either description. Larger borates are composed of trigonal planar BO3 or tetrahedral BO4 structural units, joined together via shared oxygen atoms and may be cyclic or linear in structure. Boron most often occurs in nature as borates, such as borate minerals and borosilicates.
Colemanite (Ca2B6O11·5H2O) or (CaB3O4(OH)3·H2O) is a borate mineral found in evaporite deposits of alkaline lacustrine environments. Colemanite is a secondary mineral that forms by alteration of borax and ulexite.
Christian Brevoort Zabriskie was an American businessman and vice president of Pacific Coast Borax Company. Zabriskie Point on the northeasternmost flank of the Black Mountains east of Death Valley, located in Death Valley National Park is named after him.
The borate minerals are minerals which contain a borate anion group. The borate (BO3) units may be polymerised similar to the SiO4 unit of the silicate mineral class. This results in B2O5, B3O6, B2O4 anions as well as more complex structures which include hydroxide or halogen anions. The [B(O,OH)4]− anion exists too.
Francis Marion Smith was an American miner, business magnate and civic builder in the Mojave Desert, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Oakland, California.
The Pacific Coast Borax Company (PCB) was a United States mining company founded in 1890 by the American borax magnate Francis "Borax" Smith, the "Borax King".
Hanksite is a sulfate mineral, distinguished as one of only a handful that contain both carbonate and sulfate ion groups. It has the chemical formula Na22K(SO4)9(CO3)2Cl.
The Trona Railway is a 30.5 mi (49.1 km) short-line railroad owned by Searles Valley Minerals. The TRC interchanges with the Union Pacific Railroad at Searles, California.
Tincalconite is a hydrous sodium borate mineral closely related to borax, and is a secondary mineral that forms as a dehydration product of borax. Its formula is Na2B4O7·5H2O or Na2[B4O5(OH)4]·3H2O.
The Oasis at Death Valley, formerly called Furnace Creek Inn and Ranch Resort, is a luxury resort in Furnace Creek, on private land within the boundaries of California's Death Valley National Park. It is owned and operated by Xanterra Parks and Resorts.
Sodium sesquicarbonate (Systematic name trisodium hydrogendicarbonate) Na3H(CO3)2 is a double salt of sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate, and has a needle-like crystal structure. However, the term is also applied to an equimolar mixture of those two salts, with whatever water of hydration the sodium carbonate includes, supplied as a powder.
Nahcolite is a soft, colourless or white carbonate mineral with the composition of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) also called thermokalite. It crystallizes in the monoclinic system.
Searles Valley is a census-designated place (CDP) in the Searles Valley of the Mojave Desert, in northwestern San Bernardino County, California.
Trona is an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California. In 2015 it had a population of approximately 1,900. Trona is at the western edge of Searles Lake, a dry lake bed in Searles Valley, southwest of Death Valley. The town takes its name from the mineral trona, abundant in the lakebed. It is about 170 miles (274 km) northeast of Los Angeles, on State Route 178. The ZIP code is 93562.
Bakerite is the common name given to hydrated calcium boro-silicate hydroxide, a borosilicate mineral (chemical formula Ca4B4(BO4)(SiO4)3(OH)3·(H2O)) that occurs in volcanic rocks in the Baker, California area. Discredited mineral: IMA2016-A.
Ryan (formerly known as Devar is an unincorporated community in Inyo County, California. A former mining community and company town, Ryan is situated at an elevation of 3,045 feet in the Amargosa Range, 8 miles northeast of Dante's View and 15 miles southeast of Furnace Creek.