Oxygen stable isotope fractionation behavior of cerussite and hydrocerussite: New results and reconciliation of the recent literature

Recent empirical and theoretical calculations of the temperature-dependant oxygen stable isotope fractionation behavior of cerussite have highlighted potential problems with earlier work on this topic. The synthetic cerussite which was used earlier by the lead author to determine fractionation factors was re-examined using energy dispersive X-ray analysis, and found to be internally contaminated with inclusions of the phase hydrocerussite at levels of 5-10% by volume. The volume of hydrocerussite present within the samples is not sufficient to explain the entire discrepancy between this work and the empirical and theoretical calculations made earlier by the second author of this paper. Regardless of the exact causes of experimental failure or kinetic effects, the hydrocerussite contamination and the difficulty of demonstrating that these experiments reached isotopic equilibrium suggest that the use of cerussite oxygen isotope fractionation factors determined by slow precipitation experiments be discontinued in favor of the empirically calibrated fractionation factor 1000 ln α_{cerussite-water} = 2.29(10⁶/T²) − 3.56. In addition, we have determined that the oxygen isotope fractionation factor between hydrocerussite and water at 20 °C is 1.0232.