Bulletin 166 — 2024 Hydrothermal Geochemistry and Critical Minerals Meeting: Abstracts

Alexander P. Gysi, Nicole C. Hurtig, and Laura E. Waters, editors
2024, 90 pages

This bulletin contains abstracts from the 2024 Hydrothermal Geochemistry and Critical Minerals Meeting—aka ThermoCon 2024—in Socorro, NM. The goal of the meeting was to form a community across disciplines to advance cutting-edge science on critical minerals and hydrothermal geochemistry.

The field of thermodynamics touches many aspects of geosciences, chemistry, material sciences, and much more, and is currently seeing a renewed interest because of critical minerals. This renewed interest is echoed by governmental agencies, the public, and scientists because of the importance of critical minerals for high-tech and green technologies. However, surprisingly little is known about the thermodynamic properties of critical elements, in particular at the high temperature and pressure conditions of ore-forming processes that are important for their enrichment in the crust.

Many critical mineral deposits form in magmatic-hydrothermal systems, and hence there is an important link between fundamental science and understanding the geologic processes that transport, fractionate, and enrich critical elements in the Earth's crust. Knowledge of the properties of hydrothermal fluids and critical minerals therefore has many applications, including mineral exploration and extraction, development of technologies, geothermal energy, and many more. Studying these hydrothermal geologic systems and conducting the fundamental research associated with them is challenging because it necessitates an understanding of processes in a wide pressure, temperature, and compositional range and at scales that span from molecular-level interactions to kilometer-scale fluid flow and fluid-rock interaction. We are therefore excited to present this bulletin, which compiles abstracts submitted to this meeting.