Evidence of PVT anomaly boundaries of water at high pressure from compression and NaCl.2H2O dehydration experiments.
Isothermal compression experiments on water have been performed between 0 to 80 degrees C and up to 1.3 GPa pressure. The compressibilities derived from the water compression experiments reveal a nonsmooth PVT behavior forming two anomaly boundaries. These boundaries originate at the melting line of ice III at about 0.25 GPa/-20 degrees C, and of ice VI at about 0.8 GPa/13 degrees C. Both boundaries have a positive sloped course separating three areas of different PVT properties of water. However, this P-T topology is obscured by an unresolved complication in the temperature range of 40-60 degrees C, which allows different topological interpretations of the data. As a cross-check for the compression experiment the dehydration boundary of sodium chloride-dihydrate (NaCl.2H2O) has been determined up to 1.5 GPa. The dehydration curve of NaCl.2H2O which traverses the two anomaly boundaries shows two inflections at the intersection, at 0.27 GPa/12 degrees C and at 0.77 GPa/22 degrees C, respectively. While the isothermal compressibility curves as well as the dP/dT course of the two anomaly boundaries give evidence of two densifications of water, the slope analysis of the inflections of the NaCl-2H2O dehydration curve suggests that the entropy change plays an important role. A recent model of water at high pressure conditions proposes a gradual structural transition from a low density water (LDW) at low pressures to a high density water (HDW) at high pressures. The compression data as well as the inflections of the dehydration boundary indicate, however, two discrete structural changes of water. Data comparison with that model suggests that the anomaly boundary at lower pressure corresponds to a volume fraction [V(HDW)/(V(LDW)+V(HDW))] of 0.8, while the upper one approaches a volume fraction of 1.
Mirwald
P W
PW
Institute of Mineralogy and Petrography, University of Innsbruck, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria. peter.mirwald@uibk.ac.at