9529258 Lasaga This grant provides $154,875 as partial support of the costs of acquiring a new in-situ near- atomic resolution hydrothermal system and automated BET equipment for analysis of mineral surfaces in studies of dissolution and precipitation kinetics. The hydrothermal system will be custom built and used specifically for micro-scale analyses of dissolution and precipitation rates at crystal surfaces while the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) instrument will be purchased "off-the-shelf" and used for determination of reactive surface area of mineral powders. Determination of the reaction kinetics of silicate minerals is central to low temperature geochemical research and is essential to an understanding of environmental geochemical processes. ***
