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Halogens in the Earth's mantle: Concentrations in nominally halogen-free mantle minerals and element partitioning during partial melting

Subject Area Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry
Term from 2012 to 2016
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 225102979
 
Final Report Year 2017

Final Report Abstract

The main aim of this study was to experimentally investigate the influence of halogens on processes in the Earth’s mantle. To address these objectives we addressed the aforementioned issues: We investigated the storage capacity of F in nominally F-free mantle minerals at different pressures, temperatures, and chemical compositions. Our data show that olivine and pyroxene can store several thousands µg/g F, and several µg/g Cl. We compare our results with previous results on water storage and find the nominally halogen-free minerals can store the entire budget of halogens in the mantle. Furthermore, we performed experiments to study the stability of F-rich clinohumites in subduction zones. Our data show that F-rich humite-group minerals are much more stable than their water-bearing counterparts and this makes clinohumite very effective transport phases that could transport both water and halogens into the deeper mantle. Furthermore, a third set of experiments investigates the influence of F and the stability of wadsleyite and ringwoodite in the transition zone of the mantle at 410-660 km depths. Our data show that F has profound influence on the upper limit of the transition zone and F in the system destabilizes wadsleyite and shifts the upper boundary to higher pressure. In addition, we performed a set of experiments to study the partitioning of F between nominally halogen free mantle minerals (olivine, pyroxene, garnet) and silicate melts.

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