A recent paper in the journal Science Advances sheds new light on how concentrations of metals used in renewable energy technologies can be transported from deep within the earth’s interior mantle by low-temperature, carbon-rich melts.
The article details how an international team led by Isra Ezad, a postdoctoral research fellow at Australia’s Macquarie University, carried out high-pressure and high-temperature experiments creating small amounts of molten carbonate material at conditions similar to those around 90 kilometres depth in the mantle, below the earth’s crust.
Their experiments showed carbonate melts can dissolve and carry a range of critical metals and compounds from surrounding rocks in the mantle—new information that may inform future metal prospecting.
“We knew that carbonate melts carried rare earth elements, but this research goes further,” Ezad said in a media statement. “We show this molten rock containing carbon takes up sulphur in its oxidized form, while also dissolving precious and base metals—‘green’ metals of the future—extracted from the mantle.”
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