Abstract
An understanding of the rate and mechanism of water/rock interactions is important to clarify the mass transport processes at the surface and in the shallow part of the earth's crust. Mineral dissolution into aqueous solution is one of the elementary processes and often plays a rate-controlling role in the mass transport. Studies on the mineral dissolution are reviewed from the kinetic point of view. Solution chemistry studies have provided a lot of dissolution rate constants and surface speciation data. They have clarified correlations between dissolution rates and mineral structures, whereas the rate data are not in good agreement with field rate data. Surface analysis techniques such as secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and resonant nuclear reaction analysis (RNRA) have proved the existence of hydrogen rich and cation depleted surface layers with a thickness less than 1μm. Recently developed atomic force microscopy (AFM) enables us to carry out an in situ observation of the surface dissolution and precipitation process in atomic scale. The combination of these techniques as well as simulation studies will lead us to an make integrated and quantitative mineral dissolution model.
