B.W. Yardley - Böcker

This work presents a wide range of experimental data on the composition and transport properties of fluid under crustal conditions. It includes a number of studies of ore metal solubilities at elevated pressures and temperatures. The text also discusses studies of fluid transport at high pressures and temperatures, including permeability studies of various rock types, and the chromatographic effects that may modify fluid chemistry as it moves through rock. It pays particular attention to experimental techniques. The text should be useful to researchers in geochemistry, ore deposits, geothermal energy and waste disposal.

This work is the outcome of the Kongsberg seminar, organized by the Department of Geology at the University of Oslo in May 1995, which was intended to bring together people working on diverse aspects of fluid behaviour, to allow cross-fertilization of ideas between those working on modern fluid systems and processes, and those studying old and deep fluid processes. The participants included process-oriented geologists and geochemists with specializations in petroleum geology, ore deposits, structural geology and metamorphism, together with physicists working on the application of statistical physics to geological processes. While the book's coverage is necessarily very broad, the authors are motivated by a common aim of improving understanding by crossing traditional subject boundaries. The book provides an overview of the study of fluid processes, highlighting the difficulties of integrating their chemical and physical aspects, and providing an insight into a wide range of approaches being developed today. This book should be of interest to petrologists, geochemists, hydrogeologists and economic geologists.

For much of the 20th century, scientific contacts between the Soviet Union and western countries were few and far between, and often super­ ficial. In earth sciences, ideas and data were slow to cross the Iron Curtain, and there was considerable mutual mistrust of diverging scient­ ific philosophies. In geochemistry, most western scientists were slow to appreciate the advances being made in the Soviet Union by os. Korz­ hinskii, who put the study of ore genesis on a rigorous thermodynamic basis as early as the 1930s. Korzhinskii appreciated that the most fun­ damental requirement for the application of quantitative models is data on mineral and fluid behaviour at the elevated pressures and temper­ atures that occur in the Earth's crust. He began the work at the Institute of Experimental Mineralogy (IEM) in 1965, and it became a separate establishment of the Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka in 1969. The aim was to initiate a major programme of high P-T experimental studies to apply physical chemistry and thermodynamics to resolving geological problems. For many years, Chernogolovka was a closed city, and western scient­ ists were unable to visit the laboratories, but with the advent of peres­ troika in 1989, the first groups of visitors were eagerly welcomed to the IEM. What they found was an experimental facility on a massive scale, with 300 staff, including 80 researchers and most of the rest pro­ viding technical support.