Thermodynamic Predictions of Hydrogen Generation during the Serpentinization of Harzburgite with Seawater-derived Brines
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Salty aqueous solutions (brines) occur on Earth and may be prevalent elsewhere. Serpentinization represents a family of geochemical reactions where the hydration of olivine-rich rocks can release aqueous hydrogen, H2(aq), as a byproduct, and hydrogen is a known basal electron donor for terrestrial biology. While the effects of lithological differences on serpentinization products have been thoroughly investigated, effects focusing on compositional differences of the reacting fluid have received less attention. In this contribution, we investigate how the chemistry of seawater-derived brines affects the generation of biologically available hydrogen resulting from the serpentinization of harzburgite. We numerically investigate the serpentinization of ultramafic rocks at equilibrium with an array of brines at different water activities (a proxy for salt concentration in aqueous fluids and a determinant for habitability) derived from seawater evaporation. Because the existing supersaturation of aqueous calcium carbonate, a contributor to dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in natural seawater, cannot be captured in equilibrium calculations, we bookend our calculations by enabling and suppressing carbonate minerals when simulating serpentinization. We find that the extent of DIC supersaturation can provide an important control of hydrogen availability. Increased DIC becomes a major sink for hydrogen by producing formate and associated complexes when the reacting fluids are acidic enough to allow for CO2. Indeed, H2(aq) reduces CO2(aq) to formate, leading to a hydrogen deficit. These conclusions provide additional insights into the habitability of brine systems, given their potential for serpentinization across diverse planetary bodies such as on Mars and ocean worlds.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".