CO2 is an environmentally important gas that plays a crucial role in climate change.
It is a compound that is also present in the depth of the Earth but very little information about it is available. What happens to CO2 in the Earth’s mantle? Could it be eventually hosted underground? A new publication in Nature Communications unveils some key findings.
Carbon dioxide is a widespread simple molecule in the Universe. In spite of its simplicity, it has a very complex phase diagram, forming both amorphous and crystalline phases above the pressure of 40 GPa. In the depths of the Earth, CO2 does not appear as we know it in everyday life. Instead of being a gas consisting of molecules, it has a polymeric solid form that structurally resembles quartz (a main mineral of sand) due to the pressure it sustains, which is a million times bigger than that at the surface of the Earth.
Researchers have been long studying what happens to carbonates at high temperature and high pressure, the same conditions as deep inside the Earth. Until now, the majority of experiments had shown that CO2 decomposes, with the formation of diamond and oxygen. These studies were all focused on CO2 at the upper mantle, with a 70 GPa of pressure and 1800-2800 Kelvin of temperature.
>Read more on the European Synchrotron (ESRF) website
Picture: Mohamed Mezouar, scientist in charge of ID27, on the beamline.
Credit: S. Candé.