Cours 3e cycle Romand en Sciences de la Terre

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Thermodynamic Models
in Petrology, Ore Systems, and Environmental Issues

Professor G.M. Anderson, University of Toronto
Geneva, October 18-22 and 25-26, 2004

The course is mostly at the level of "Thermodynamics of Natural Systems" (Wiley & Sons, 1996), with some material from the second edition, which is not yet published. Having the 1996 book is not necessary as many sections will be available in pdf format, as well as other material not in the book.

The presentations will be in PowerPoint, hopefully with more detailed discussions on the board or overhead projector. A lecture and problem solving lab is planned for each morning and each afternoon.

The course will start with the Laws of thermodynamics, but will progress quickly to the Gibbs energy, the activity, and the equilibrium constant. With these concepts, many application areas can be addressed, and more interesting problems solved.

The main application areas will be:
- Ore deposits (transport and deposition of sulfide minerals),
- Titration and saturation index calculations with application to acid mine drainage,
- Activity coefficients in solid solutions, excess properties, regular solutions, etc. using olivine and garnet examples. This topic is from the second edition.

Given the nature of the course and the time available, these application areas cannot be highly detailed, but to some extent the interests of the students will determine what is discussed.

At the beginning we will use hand calculators and data from tables. Later we will use SUPCRT92 to obtain data. Discussion of the HKF model in SUPCRT92 is generally speaking beyond the scope of the course, but like other things, it depends to some extent on student interest. The other program we will use is PHREEQC from the USGS. We will use it to do speciation, and perhaps reactive transport if there is time. Spreadsheets will also probably be useful.

[Thermodynamic Models in Petrology, Ore Systems, and Environmental Issues]
[Ore Deposits ] [Dept Mineralogy]

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Send comments on page to Pierre.Perroud@terre.unige.ch