Original paper
Influence of Fe on hydrogen diffusivity in orthopyroxene
Stalder, Roland; Purwin, Horst; Skogby, Henrik
European Journal of Mineralogy Volume 19 Number 6 (2007), p. 899 - 904
published: Dec 17, 2007
Abstract
The presence of iron has important consequences for hydrogen diffusion in many minerals, allowing charge compensation during hydrogen extraction by a redox mechanism. Here we present new experimentally determined diffusion data for hydrogen in synthetic orthopyroxenes in the system MgSiO3 - FeSiO3 derived from hydrogen extraction experiments. Results confirm the previously made assumption that hydrogen extraction is rate limited by hydrogen self diffusion, if a threshold value for xFe is exceeded. Our best estimate for this threshold value is xFe = 0.12 (±0.02). Natural orthopyroxenes from ultramafic rocks exhibit small, but significantly higher diffusivities than the synthetic samples, leading to the conclusion that other factors such as the concentration of M-site vacancies or the presence of other cations also may influence the rate of hydrogen extraction.
Keywords
enstatite • ferrosilite • hydrogen diffusion • ir spectroscopy