The most common marine evaporites are calcite, gypsum and anhydrite, halite, sylvite, carnallite, langbeinite, polyhalite, and kainite.
[2] However, there are approximately 80 different minerals that have been reported found in evaporite deposits,[3][4] though only about a dozen are common enough to be considered important rock formers.
[2] Common minerals that are found in these deposits include blödite, borax, epsomite, gaylussite, glauberite, mirabilite, thenardite and trona.
The inflow also has to occur in a closed basin, or one with restricted outflow, so that the sediment has time to pool and form in a lake or other standing body of water.
Examples of modern non-marine depositional environments include the Great Salt Lake in Utah and the Dead Sea, which lies between Jordan and Israel.
Thick halite deposits are expected to become an important location for the disposal of nuclear waste because of their geologic stability, predictable engineering and physical behaviour, and imperviousness to groundwater.
Halite formations are famous for their ability to form diapirs, which produce ideal locations for trapping petroleum deposits.
Recent evidence from satellite observations[7] and laboratory experiments[8] suggest evaporites are likely present on the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
Evaporite deposits cover large regions of Titan's surface, mainly along the coastlines of lakes or in isolated basins (Lacunae) that are equivalent to salt pans on Earth.