Earth & Environmental Sciences

Recent studies of carbonate surface reactivity have underscored the fundamental variability of dissolution rates and the heterogeneous distribution of the reaction over the mineral surface due to the inhomogeneous distribution of surface energy. Dolomite dissolution rates relative to different cleavage planes (r-planes) and surfaces cut approximately perpendicular to the c-axis (c-planes) were studied at 50 °C as a function of pH (3.4 ≤ pH ≤ 9.0) and solution composition by vertical scanning interferometry (VSI) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), with the aim of providing an estimate of the intrinsic rate variation of dolomite single crystals and describing the surface reaction distribution and the rate controlling mechanisms. Surface normal retreat rates measured under acidic conditions increased linearly with time and were not visibly affected by the parallel increase of surface roughness. Mean total dissolution rates of r-planes decreased by over 200 times from pH 3.4 to pH 9.0 and CO32–-rich solutions, whereas corresponding rate variations spanned over 3 orders of magnitude when also c-plane rate distributions were included in the analysis. At acid to near neutral pH, c-planes dissolved ∼ three times faster than the adjoining r-planes but slower at basic pH and high total carbon concentration, displaying a distinctive morphologic evolution in these two regimes. The comparison of polished and unpolished crystals showed that polished cleavage planes dissolved about three times faster than the unpolished counterpart at near neutral to basic conditions, whereas no significant difference in reactivity was observed at pH < 5. Although experimental data and observations indicate a tendency of dolomite faces to reach a low-energy topography over the course of the reaction, the evolution of the entire crystal morphology depends also on the reactivity of edge and corner regions, whose contribution to measured rates is not generally taken into account by laboratory experiments. The study of time-dependent mineral morphology and reactivity requires an integrated approach of kinetic modeling and experimentation, where measured rate variance and observed reaction mechanisms represent fundamental parameters for the improvement of geochemical models in predicting long-term reaction rates in a wide range of environmental conditions.