scientists from rice university and the university of bremen's center for
1 environmental sciences (marum) in germany have combined cutting-edge experimental techniques and computer simulations to find a new way of predicting how water dissolves
crystalline（水晶般的） structures like those found in natural stone and cement. in a new study featured on the cover of the nov. 28 issue of the journal of physical chemistry c, the team found their method was more efficient at predicting the dissolution rates of crystalline structures in water than previous methods. the research could have wide-ranging impacts in diverse areas, including water quality and planning, environmental sustainability,
2 resistance and cement construction.
"we need to gain a better understanding of dissolution
3 to better predict the fate of certain materials, both in nature and in man-made systems," said lead
4 andreas lüttge, a professor of mineralogy at marum and professor
5 and research professor in earth science at rice. his team specializes in studying the thin boundary layer that forms between minerals and fluids.
boundary layers are
ubiquitous（普遍存在的） in nature; they occur when raindrops fall on stone, water
6 through soil and the ocean meets the sea floor. scientists and engineers have long been interested in
7 explaining how crystalline materials, including many minerals and stones, interact with and are dissolved by water. calculations about the rate of these dissolution processes are critical in many fields of science and engineering.
in the new study, lüttge and lead author inna kurganskaya, a research associate in earth science at rice, studied dissolution processes using
8, one of the most common minerals found in nature. quartz, or
9 dioxide, is a type of
10, the most abundant group of minerals in earth's crust.
at the boundary layer where quartz and water meet, multiple chemical reactions occur. some of these happen
11 and others take place in succession. in the new study, the researchers sought to create a computerized model that could accurately simulate the complex chemistry at the boundary layer.
"the new model simulates the dissolution
kinetics（动力学） at the boundary layer with greater precision than earlier stochastic models operating at the same scale," kurganskaya said. "existing simulations rely on rate constants assigned to a wide range of possible reactions, and as a result, the total material
12 from the surface have an
inherent（内在的） 13 range -- a plus or minus factor that is always there."
one reason the team's simulations more accurately represent real processes is that its models incorporate actual measurements from cutting-edge instruments and from
14 materials, including glass
15 and nanomaterials. with a special imaging technique called "
16 scanning interferometry," which the group at marum and rice helped to develop, the team scanned the crystal surfaces of both minerals and manufactured materials to generate topographic maps with a resolution of a just a few nanometers, or billionths of a meter.
"we found that dissolution rates that were predicted using rate constants were sometimes off by as much as two orders of magnitude," lüttge said.
the new method for more
17 predicting dissolution processes could revolutionize the way engineers and scientists make many calculations related to a
18 of things, including the stability of building materials, the
19 of materials used for radioactive waste storage and more, he said.
"further work is needed to prove the broad utility of the method," he said. "in the next phase of research, we plan to test our simulations on larger systems and over longer periods."
the research was supported by the global climate and energy project at stanford university.
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