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Pathways of volcanic glass alteration in laboratory experiments through inorganic and microbially-mediated processes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2018

J. Cuadros ,
B. Afsin ,
P. Jadubansa ,
M. Ardakani ,
C. Ascaso  and
J. Wierzchos
J. Cuadros*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7, 5BD, UK
B. Afsin
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7, 5BD, UK
P. Jadubansa
Affiliation:
Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK
M. Ardakani
Affiliation:
Department of Materials, Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
C. Ascaso
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Biology, National Museum of Natural Sciences, CSIC, Serrano 115, 28006 Madrid, Spain
J. Wierzchos
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Biology, National Museum of Natural Sciences, CSIC, Serrano 115, 28006 Madrid, Spain
*
*E-mail: j.cuadros@nhm.ac.uk
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Abstract

Rhyolitic obsidian was reacted with natural waters to study the effect of water chemistry and biological activity on the composition and formation mechanisms of clay. Two sets of experiments (18 months, 6 years) used fresh, hypersaline water (Mg-Na-SO4-Cl- and NaCl-rich) and seawater. The 6-year experiments produced the transformation of obsidian into quartz, apparently by in situ re-crystallization (Cuadros et al., 2012). The most abundant neoformed clay was dioctahedral (typically montmorillonite), indicating chemical control by the glass (where Al > Mg). Altered glass morphology and chemistry in the 18-months experiments indicated in situ transformation to clay. Magnesium-rich (saponite) clay formed under water-chemistry control in the bulk and within biofilms with elevated Mg concentration (Cuadros et al., 2013). The contact between microbial structures and glass was very intimate. Glass transformation into quartz may be due to some characteristic of the obsidian and/or alteration conditions. Such combination needs not to be uncommon in nature and opens new possibilities of quartz origin.

Keywords

biologically-mediated formation of claycryo-SEMmineral-microbe interactionquartz formationTEM-AEMvolcanic glass alteration to clay
Type
Research Article
Information
Clay Minerals , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , June 2013 , pp. 423 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2013

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Footnotes

†

Present address: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Arts, Ondokuz Mayis University, Samsun, 55139 Turkey

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