ThermoCon 2024: Hydrothermal geochemistry and critical minerals Meeting

We are a research and service division of:

Socorro, New Mexico — June 3-7, 2024

Hosts

Alex Gysi, Nicole Hurtig, Laura Waters
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

Meeting goals

Welcome to our ThermoCon meeting! The aim of this meeting is to bring together fans of thermodynamics, hence the name “ThermoCon”, and 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. Please have a look at the published abstract volume in the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources Bulletin 166.

A major goal of this conference is to build a new network of scientists and professionals from different expertise including but not limited to: experimental geochemistry/chemistry; thermodynamic/geochemical modeling, databases; reactive mass transport modeling; molecular dynamic simulations; element extraction/separation technologies; theoretical thermodynamics and equations of state; mineralogy, ore deposits, and processes in natural systems. Another important aspect is the participation of students and training the next generation of leaders in the field of critical minerals and thermodynamics.

ThermoCon 2026!

Please stay tuned, ThermoCon 2024 was a huge success and included participants (17 students, 4 postdocs, 21 senior researchers) from the USA, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, and France with diverse backgrounds. This includes National Labs (LANL, Sandia, PNNL, AMES), Universities (NMT, U.Koln, Washington State U., Washington U., UTEP, U. Wyoming, U. Orleans), Research Centers (GEOMAR, Paul Scherrer Institute, GFZ Potsdam, CNRS, CSIRO), and government/state agencies and industry (USGS, NM Bureau of Geology, Alma Energy). We are therefore already planning the next meeting for 2026!

Conference Venue and Logistics

This is a smaller cozy conference located in the middle of the high desert plains, hosted at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico, USA. The meeting will be held between June 3-7. The talks will be hosted in the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, the poster sessions will be hosted at the Deju House at New Mexico Tech. We expect about 40 people at the venue and is partly sponsored by the US Department of Energy (Office of Science), the National Science Foundation (EAR), and the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources.

Registration

Registration is now closed!

Presentations and Schedule

Download a detailed ThermoCon schedule and presentation list.

This five-day meeting includes daily talks, keynotes, small workshops, discussion sessions, and two evenings of poster sessions for students. One day includes an excursion to the nearby Lemitar Mountains carbonatites REE deposit to discover the geology of New Mexico and allow participants to link geosciences with other areas of basic energy sciences. We will also organize a geochemical modeling workshop using our “in-house” MINES thermodynamic database geoinfo.nmt.edu/mines-tdb to show an application of thermodynamics to modeling critical mineral deposits.