FLUIDS IN THE EARTH · Fluids in the Earth, reconstructing their composition through space and time
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2010-08-15 → 2011-12-31
- EU contribution
- €173,241
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-IIF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Fluids in the Earth, reconstructing their composition through space and time
The abundance of water on Earth has a profound impact: aqueous fluids facilitate plate tectonics, control the redistribution of elements to make ore deposits and determine the availability of (trace) elements crucial to life. Knowledge of their compositions is therefore essential. Unfortunately, direct fluid samples are rare, especially for deep in the Earth and for its earliest history. However, minerals with preserved compositions are readily available, sampling environments >200 km in depth and back to 4.2 billion years ago. Minerals record a fingerprint of the associated fluid by element exchange and this record can be read if we understand and can predict the partitioning of elements between minerals and fluid. The goal of this project was to develop a method for reading this mineral record of fluid composition, with the hypothesis that the preference of an element to enter the mineral is controlled by how well it fits in the crystal structure in terms of its radius and charge, i.e. that it obeys Lattice Strain Theory.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Earth is the blue planet", with over 70% of its surface covered in water and a further equivalent of up to 4 oceans in its interior. This abundance of water has a profound impact on the processes that shape our planet, as well as the development of the organisms that inhabit it. To understand this impact, it is necessary to know the properties and chemistry of the fluids involved. At present this information is largely unavailable. This project aims to develop mineral composition as a new tool to determine the composition of fluids using the systematic partitioning of elements between minerals and fluids. Whereas direct samples of fluids are rare, especially as age increases, the associated minerals are preserved. At present, this approach is limited because of a lack of mineral-fluid partition values at appropriate conditions. Moreover, partitioning depends strongly on the speciation of elements in the fluid and this is mostly unknown at elevated pressures and temperatures. In this project I will develop a model to predict element partitioning between minerals and fluids at elevated pressures and temperatures. I will use atomistic simulation techniques to model both the preference of an element to enter the mineral, and the element's speciation. Combined, this will allow me to determine the relative partition coefficients among elements and the changes therein with changing pressure, temperature and chemistry. I will combine this relative model with partitioning experiments to allow for quantitative modelling of fluids in subduction zones and mid-ocean ridges, which control element cycling between the Earth’s interior and surface. I will also reconstruct ocean chemistry back in time, especially for the early Earth where life developed. More generally, given the ubiquity of water-rock interaction in natural and industrial processes, this model will improve our understanding and modelling capability of a wide variety of processes in the Earth Sciences and beyond."
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union