Speaker
Description
Mineral dendrites are an example of ramified patterns that form in rocks infiltrated by Mn-rich hydrothermal fluids. Interaction of these fluids with oxygenated environments within the rock matrix leads to the formation of manganese oxide, which subsequently precipitates and forms intricate patterns. Manganese-oxidizing bacteria are known to catalyze Mn oxidation reactions by several orders of magnitude, suggesting that microbial activity may influence the dynamics and morphology of those branched manganese precipitates. In this work we hypothesize that the presence of Mn-oxidizing bacteria can also trigger band formation in the growing dendrites, which is observed in some natural systems.
Using numerical simulations, we explore dendrite growth under different assumptions regarding reaction kinetics, including biologically enhanced oxidation rates, and analyze the resulting morphologies. We study the dependence of dendritic structures on key physico-chemical parameters such as initial concentrations of manganese ions and oxygen molecules, reaction rates, nucleation thresholds, and surface energy. We relate our numerical findings to experimental data on three-dimensional dendrites in clinoptilolite tuffs obtained using X-ray microtomography, which exhibit internal banded patterns. We focus on analyzing how differences between biologically influenced and purely abiotic growth scenarios influence the dendritic morphology. Our aim is to identify specific morphological features that could serve as a key to deciphering the hydrochemical and potentially biological conditions prevailing during the growth of such patterns in natural systems.
| Country | Poland |
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