The ability to describe how organic molecules control the behaviour of minerals, rocks and soils would give us the ability to predict the composition of water and gases in contact. This is a key for solving some of the serious Earth science challenges that society faces, including contaminant mobility, water quality, safe storage of waste, improved control on soil fertility, conversion of CO2 to solid, and from an industry perspective, design and production of safe, cheap functional materials. Getting such information has been difficult in the past, because molecular scale processes are often beyond the limits of what we can see, even with microscopes, but it is important because organic compounds can dramatically alter mineral behaviour.
My overall objective is to gain previously inaccessible insight into how silicate minerals dissolve and grow or transform to other minerals. We will use new, custom built instruments that can "see" at scales ranging from atoms to centimetres. Silicate minerals are the most abundant in nature and they are important in industrial products, ranging all the way from glass to particles in toothpaste. By learning from nature, we hope to develop a universal, conceptual framework for how organic molecules interact with silicate materials and from that, tailor reactions as we need. We focus on silicates because basalt (black volcanic rock, like Iceland, Azores, Hawaii) mineralises CO2, converting it to carbonate minerals (such as scale in the tea kettle, or limestone in the Alps). Manmade alkaline, silicate materials also react, such as waste building materials. The aim of this project is to understand the tricks nature uses to dissolve rocks and make other minerals, because the new knowledge will show us a pathway for converting CO2 gas into solid, where it will be mineralised, stable for geologic time.
