Preheated shock experiments in the molten CaAl_2Si_2O_8-CaFeSi_2O_6-CaMgSi_2O_6 ternary: A test for linear mixing of liquid volumes at high pressure and temperature

Abstract

We performed 17 new shock wave experiments on preheated (1673 K) hedenbergite liquid (CaFeSi_2O_6) and two model basalt liquids (an equimolar binary mix of CaAl_2Si_2O_8 + CaFeSi_2O_6 and an equimolar ternary mix of CaAl_2Si_2O_8 + CaFeSi_2O_6 +CaMgSi_2O_6) in order to determine their equations of state (EOS). Ambient pressure density measurements on these and other Fe-bearing silicate liquids indicate that FeO has a partial molar volume that is highly dependent on composition, which leads to large errors in estimates of the densities of Fe-bearing liquids at ambient pressure based on an ideal mixing of any fixed set of end-member liquids. We formulated a series of mixing tests using the EOS determined in this study to examine whether ideal mixing of volumes might nevertheless suffice to describe the ternary system CaAl_2Si_2O_8-CaFeSi_2O_6-CaMgSi_2O_6 at high temperature and pressure. The ideal mixing null hypothesis is rejected; compositional variations in partial molar volume of FeO appear to extend to high pressure. Only densities of Fe-bearing liquid mixtures with oxide mole fraction of FeO less than 0.06 can be adequately approximated using an ideal solution.

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