A recent paper in the journal Science Advances sheds new light on how concentrations of metals used in renewable energy technologies can be transported from deep within the earth’s interior mantle by low-temperature, carbon-rich melts.
The article details how an international team led by Isra Ezad, a postdoctoral research fellow at Australia’s Macquarie University, carried out high-pressure and high-temperature experiments creating small amounts of molten carbonate material at conditions similar to those around 90 kilometres depth in the mantle, below the earth’s crust.