9522878 Byrne Important controls on the behavior and the rare earth elements in seawater include: Solution complexation, association with organic ligands on particle surfaces, and incorporation in phosphate coprecipiates. An understanding of these controls is important for a general understanding of metal behavior in seawater, and also because of the closely related chemistries of the rare earths and anthropogenic radioactive actinides. The behavior of Y, are rare earths and actinides in complexation, coprecipitation and sorption processes is highly dependent on ionic strength and pressure. There is relatively little direct information allowing quantitative predictions of the influence of ionic strength on rare earth equilibrium processes, and an extreme paucity of data appropriate to descriptions of the influence of pressure on trace metal equilibria in general. This study will quantitatively characterize the influence of pressure and ionic strength on the comparative solution, surface and solid-state chemistries of yttrium and fourteen rare earth elements.
