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Formula: Cu(OH)Cl
Chloride
Crystal System: Monoclinic
Specific gravity: 3.79 calculated
Hardness: 1 to 2
Streak: Yellowish green
Colour: Yellowish green to olive-green
Luminescence: No fluorescence under UV
Solubility: Unstable in non-desert conditions, and in water converts within minutes to
botallackite and atacamite.
Environments
Plutonic igneous environments
Cave deposits
Volcanic sublimates
Localities
At the type locality, La Vendida mine, Sierra Gorda, Antofagasta Province, Antofagasta, Chile, belloite occurs
as yellowish
green to olive-green incrustations and masses in which individual grains are up to 100 µm. It occurs in
quartz-feldspar-tourmaline
rock from the abandoned mine. Associated minerals include nitratine,
montmorillonite,
paratacamite,
atacamite, gunningite,
alunite and natrojarosite
(AM 85.1843-1847, CM 40.247).
Other associated minerals include intermediate members of the
aubertite-magnesioaubertite
solid-solution series, eriochalcite, kaolinite,
halloysite, riotintoite,
clinoatacamite and vendidaite
(HOM).
At Pabellón de Pica, Chanabaya, Iquique Province, Tarapacá, Chile, belloite occurs in a desert guano deposit associated with
bojarite and halite
(HOM).
At the Second scoria cone, Northern Breakthrough, Great Fissure eruption, Tolbachik volcano, Kamchatka Krai, Russia,
belloite
occurs as an alteration product of fumarolic sublimates
(HOM). Chrysothallite is associated with belloite,
avdoninite, chlorothionite,
sanguite, eriochalcite,
mitscherlichite, sylvite,
carnallite and kainite
(MM 79.365–376).
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