This award provides 50% of the funding needed to construct five special design reaction vessels for use at high pressure and temperature. The design, construction and operation of the pressure vessels will be under the direction of the Principal Investigator in the Division of Geological & Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech will provide the remaining 50% funding necessary for the project. The proposed apparatus incorporates a novel feature whereby the sample is magnetically levitated during an experiment and can be rapidly moved into and out of the hot zone within the vessel without release of pressure. The vessels will be used in a wide variety of projects aimed at understanding the behavior of volatile components in natural and synthetic model igneous systems, including: investigations of the partitioning of hydrogen isotopes between vapor and silicate melts and its relation to the speciation of water in magmatic liquids; studies of the solubility and diffusion of water and carbon dioxide in silicate glasses and melts; study of the partitioning of carbon isotopes between vapor and silicate melts.
