Decarbonization of siderite in the water-rich upper mantle

Abstract

The aqueous fluids within subducted slabs have the potential to influence the form of carbonate presence and the carbon cycling process. Experiments were performed on resistive heating diamond anvil cell using siderite crystals and grains with water under conditions of pressure as high as 11.4 GPa and temperatures reaching up to 530 °C. These experiments aimed to simulate geological reactions that may occur within a depth range of 340 km in subducted slabs. Raman spectroscopy was employed to monitor the reactions and microscale phenomena within the sample chamber as pressure and temperature increase. The recovered products were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The results indicate that at 0.8 GPa and 108 °C, a Fischer-Tropsch Type (FTT) reaction occurred on the sample surface, resulting in the formation of organic compound formaldehyde, followed by the observation of formic acid. At higher pressure and temperature (3.5 GPa, 420 °C), the formation of γ-Fe₂O₃ and γ-FeOOH was observed on the sample surface, accompanied by the release of CO₂ and H₂. Transmission electron microscope analysis of the quenched product powders indicated that the generated iron oxides were consistent with the phases observed at high pressure and temperature conditions. High pressure and temperature dissolution experiments of siderite in water reveal that carbon may be released into the mantle wedge entirely in the form of CO₂ in warm subducted slabs and cold subducted slabs that subduct to depths of 75 km. The released CO₂ participates in the carbon cycle of the island arc volcanic systems in the upper mantle at depths of 70–120 km and accelerates the transfer of subducted carbon to the Earth’s surface.

Keywords

Siderite / Water / Dissolution / Decarbonization / Carbon dioxide / Carbon cycle

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mengqi Guo: Writing – original draft, Visualization, Data curation, Conceptualization. Fangfei Li: Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Xinyang Li: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Conceptualization. Zhaodong Liu: Writing – review & editing. Liang Li: Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Daoyuan Wu: Data curation. Qiang Zhou: Writing – review & editing, Supervision.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

Xinyang Li acknowledges support from the National Key Research and Development Project of China (Grant No. 2023YFF0804100). Xinyang Li, Qiang Zhou, and Fangfei Li acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC; 42102030, 12074141, and 12274168). This work was also supported by Jilin Provincial Science and Technology Development Project (Grants No. 20210402054GH and No. 20220101011JC), the Program for Jilin University Science and Technology Innovative Research Team (Grant No. 2021-TD-05), and National Major Science Facility Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility Achievement Transformation Platform Construction (2021FGWCXNLJSKJ01). We also acknowledge the Extreme Condition High-Pressure Science Center (China) for the provision of the experimental facilities and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. This work is supported financially by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42272041).

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