An Experimental Study of Water and Carbon Dioxide Solubilities in Mid-Ocean Ridge Basaltic Liquids. Part I: Calibration and Solubility Models

Experiments were conducted to determine the solubilities ofH₂O and CO₂ and the nature of their mixing behavior in basalticliquid at pressures and temperature relevant to seqfloor eruption.Mid-ocean ridge basaltic (MORB) liquid was equilibrated at 1200°Cwith pure H₂O at pressures of 176–717 bar and H₂O—CO₂vapor at pressures up to 980 bar. Concentrations and speciationof H₂O and CO₂ dissolved in the quenched glasses were measuredusing IR spectroscopy. Molar absorptivities for the 4500 cm^–1band of hydroxyl groups and the 5200 and 1630 cm^–1 bandsof molecular water are 0•67±0•03, 0•62±0•07,and 25±3 l/mol-cm, respectively. These and previouslydetermined molar absorptivities for a range of silicate meltcompositions correlate positively and linearly with the concentrationof tetrahedral cations (Si+Al). The speciation of water in glass quenched from vapor-saturatedbasaltic melt is similar to that determined by Silver &Stolper (Journal of Petrology 30, 667–709, 1989) in albiticglass and can be fitted by their regular ternary solution modelusing the coefficients for albitic glasses. Concentrations ofmolecular water measured in the quenched basaltic glasses areproportional to f H₂O in all samples regardless of the compositionof the vapor, demonstrating that the activity of molecular waterin basaltic melts follows Henry's law at these pressures. Abest fit to our data and existing higher-pressure water solubilitydata (Khitarov et al., Geochemistry 5, 479–492, 1959;Hamilton et al., Journal of Petrology 5, 21–39, 1964),assuming Henrian behavior for molecular water and that the dependenceof molecular water content on total water content can be describedby the regular solution model, gives estimates for the V^{o, m}_H2Oof 12±1 cm³/mol and for the 1-bar water solubility of0•11 wt%. Concentrations of CO² dissolved as carbonate in the melt forpure CO₂-saturated and mixed H₂O-CO₂-saturated experiments area simple function of f_CO2 These results suggest Henrian behaviorfor the activity of carbonate in basaltic melt and do not supportthe widely held view that water significantly enhances the solutionof carbon dioxide in basaltic melts. Using a V^{o, m}_r of 23 cm³/mol(Pan et al., Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55, 1587–1595,1991), the solubility of carbonate in the melt at 1 bar and1200°C is 0•5 p.p.m. Our revised determination of CO₂solubility is 20% higher than that reported by Stolper &Holloway (Earth and Planetary Science Letters 87, 397–408,1988). KEY WORDS: mid-ocean ridge basalts; water and carbon dioxide solubility; experimental petrology