The compositions of Fluids in and on the Earth

地球内部和地球上流体的成分

• 批准号: 418727-2012
• 负责人: vanHinsberg, Vincent
• 金额: $ 2.26万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2013-01-01 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=531335
• 关键词: compositions; Fluids; Earth

Water in and on the Earth facilitates plate tectonics, controls the redistribution of elements to make ore deposits and determines the availability of (trace) elements essential for life. Knowledge of the compositions of these fluids is therefore crucial. Unfortunately, opportunities to sample and quantify fluids directly are rare, espe- cially for sites 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 store a chemical fingerprint of the fluid from which they grow, and if the distribution of elements between mineral and fluid is known, this fingerprint can be used to reconstruct the composition of the fluid. The mineral record is therefore an attractive source of information and in this research program I will establish a methodology to reconstruct fluid compositions from the composition of minerals. The research will use Lattice Strain Theory, which relates the misfit in size and charge of an element in the structure of a mineral to its partition coefficient, where a large misfit limits mineral uptake of the element resulting in a low partition coefficient. This theory allows for trends in partitioning to be modeled and for a predictive model of element distribution to be developed. Partitioning experiments at varying temperature and pressure will be combined with computer simulations to investigate the response of partitioning to changing conditions, and how this links to changes in the geometry and elastic/electric properties of the mineral lattice. The resulting model will be applied to natural samples to determine the compositions of fluids involved in formation of gold deposits, to understand the cycling of elements through the Earth, and to reconstruct the compositions of the Early Earth oceans in which life developed. In fact, this approach is applicable to any environment where minerals grow from a fluid and can therefore also be used to study industrial processes from wastewater treatment to ore mineral processing. Few other techniques are able to provide information on fluid compositions deep within the Earth and back in time, and none are applicable to the range of environments that can be covered by this approach.

地球上和地球上的水促进了板块构造，控制元素的重新分布以制造矿石沉积物，并确定（痕量）元素的可用性。因此，了解这些流体的组成是至关重要的。不幸的是，直接采样和量化流体的机会很少见，特别是对于地球深处及其最早历史的地点。但是，具有保留成分的矿物质很容易获得，深度> 200公里的采样环境，又回到42亿年前。矿物质储存了它们生长的液体的化学指纹，如果已知矿物质和液体之间的元素分布，则该指纹可用于重建流体的组成。因此，矿物记录是一个有吸引力的信息来源，在本研究计划中，我将建立一种方法来从矿物质组成中重建流体组成。该研究将使用晶格菌株理论，该理论将矿物质结构的大小和元素的不匹配与其分区系数联系起来，在该系数中，大型不合适限制了该元素的矿物质吸收，从而导致较低的分区系数。该理论允许对分区进行建模趋势，并为要开发的元素分布的预测模型。在不同温度和压力下进行的分区实验将与计算机模拟相结合，以研究分配对变化条件的响应，以及这如何与矿物晶格的几何形状和弹性/电特性的变化联系在一起。所得模型将应用于天然样品，以确定与形成黄金沉积物形成的流体的组成，了解元素通过地球的循环，并重建生命发展的早期地球海洋的组成。实际上，这种方法适用于从液体中矿物质生长的任何环境，因此也可以用于研究从废水处理到矿石矿物质加工的工业过程。很少有其他技术能够提供有关地球深处和及时的流体成分的信息，也不适用于这种方法可以涵盖的环境范围。