Rare earths release from dissolving atmospheric dust and their accumulation into crystallising halite: The Dead Sea example.

The industrial extraction of Y and lanthanides (hereafter defined as Rare Earth Elements, REE) often requires the achievement of leaching procedures removing these metals from primary rocks and their transfer in aqueous leachates or incorporated in newly forming soluble solids. These procedures are the most dangerous to the environment in relation to the composition of leachates. Hence, the recognition of natural settings where these processes currently occur, represents a worthy challenge for learning how to carry out similar industrial procedures under natural and more eco-friendly conditions.

Trace element fractionation through halite crystallisation: Geochemical mechanisms and environmental implications.

Halite is an important mineral for industry, agriculture and food production. It crystallises during water evaporation, and the progressive increase of dissolved metal ions in the brine occurs simultaneously. Thus, halite exploitation may deliver metal ions into the environment and the mechanism of this trace element accumulation has to be studied.

Behavior of rare earth elements in an aquifer perturbed by CO injection: Environmental implications.

Three cubic-meters of CO-saturated water was injected into a subsurface fractured aquifer in a post-mined area, using a push-pull test protocol. Groundwater samples were collected before and after CO-injection to quantify geochemical changes. CO-injection initially reduced the pH of water from 7.

Zr, Hf and REE distribution in river water under different ionic strength conditions.

The Platani River flowing in south-central Sicily, interacting with evaporite rocks, generates a wide range of ionic strength in the water catchment from 0.1 to 5.0molkg.

Rapid migration of CO-rich micro-fluids in calcite matrices.

The transport of supercritical fluids is a determining factor for several geological processes and fundamental in predicting natural resource accumulation and distribution. Calcite, ubiquitous in most geological environments, may contain supercritical CO trapped under the form of fluid inclusions that may move through grain boundaries affecting the rock physical properties. However, despite macroscopic evidence for this process, until recent it was not possible to characterize this process at the nano-scale due to the difficulty of such observations.