T80 Investigations of Hydrothermal Systems: Advances and Challenges

Monday, 23 September 2019
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 222BC, North Building

THERMOCHEMICAL VALUES OF CHLORO-HASTINGSITE AND QUANTIFYING CHLORINE CONCENTRATIONS OF HYDROTHERMAL SYSTEMS

Paper number: T80-12
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM

Authors

  • Dave Jenkins Presenting Author
    Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY

Abstract

The chloride content of hydrothermal fluids is of interest because it aids the transport of ore-forming metals, affects the temperature of dehydration reactions at a given depth, and controls the formation of Cl-bearing minerals in hydrothermally-altered rocks. At present there are no thermochemical data available for Cl-bearing amphiboles. Initial values of ΔHf and S° for chloro-hastingsite (NaCa2(Fe4Fe3+)(Al2Si6)O22Cl2 = ClHast) have been derived from the experimentally determined upper-thermal stability curve of a Cl-bearing calcium amphibole.

The breakdown of amphibole (Na0.4(Ca1.8Na0.2)(Fe3.7Fe3+0.8Al0.5)(Al1.4Si6.6)O22(OH1.5Cl0.5) was investigated in the range of 1-3 kb, 580-700°C using synthetic phases made in the system Na2O-CaO-FeO-Al2O3-SiO2-H2O-FeCl2. Reversal mixtures consisted of equal proportions of the amphibole-rich reactant and its breakdown products (plag-An80, fayalite, hedenbergite, halite, and FeCl2). These were treated dry in Ag50Pd50 capsules in internally-heated gas vessels using H2-argon mixed gas as the pressure medium, with the H2 fugacity equivalent to log(fO2) = +0.5ΔCoCoO. The reaction boundary was located at 614 ± 25°C/0.98 kb, 650 ± 20°C/2.1 kb, and 690 ± 20°C/3.0 kb. Based on the (narrow divariant) breakdown reaction: ClHast = 0.95An + 0.1Alb + 1.7Fay + 1.05Hed + 0.9NaCl + 0.55FeCl2 + 0.25O2, microprobe analyses of the phases, using the Holland and Powell (2011, JMG) database, and modeling the activity of ClHast after pargasite, values of -10,671.2 kJ/mol and 655.8 J/K·mol were obtained for ΔHf and S°, respectively, at 298K and 1bar for ClHast, based on a volume of 28.48 kJ/kb and Cp (kJ/K·mol) = 1.3671 + 2.93E-05(T) + 93.725/(T2) – 9.583/(T0.5).

With these data, expressions can be made to quantify Cl concentrations of brines equilibrated with Cl-bearing amphiboles. For example, Cl-bearing amphiboles in the amphibolitized part of the shear zone at Langoy, Norway (Kusebauch et al. 2015, JPetrol) indicate NaCl molalities of 0.6 – 4 m (4-19 wt% NaCl), which are probably low as fluid inclusions indicate higher salinities (> 30 wt% NaCl). Greater precision is expected for calculations of activity ratios (i.e., aCl-/aOH-); however, these initial results illustrate the potential to extract absolute NaCl concentrations of fluids in hydrothermal systems.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 51, No. 5

doi: 10.1130/abs/2019AM-338555

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