Heat-Induced Dolomitization of Amorphous Calcium Magnesium Carbonate in a CO2-Filled Closed System

Abstract

We report a method to synthesize dolomite [CaMg(CO3)2] from amorphous calcium magnesium carbonate (ACMC) via solid-state transformation. When ACMC is heated in air, it does not crystallize into dolomite but decomposes into Mg calcite, magnesium oxide, and CO2. Hence, we heated ACMC in a closed system filled with CO2gas (pCO2>1.2 bar at 420 °C) and produced submicron-sized dolomite. Single-phase dolomite was obtained after dissolving impurities in the run products, such as northupite [Na3Mg(CO3)2Cl] and eitelite [Na2Mg(CO3)2], in water. Also, we investigated the crystallization process of dolomite by changing the heating temperature and heating time. Despite crystallization by solid-state transformation, the heated samples crystallized to dolomite via Ca-rich protodolomite with no ordering reflection of X-ray diffraction as previously observed for hydrothermal synthesis. The results demonstrated that this crystallization pathway is kinetically favored even in solid-state transformation and that the Ca-rich protodolomite phase preferentially crystallizes during heating, leading to phase separation from the amorphous phase. Therefore, the crystallization process via protodolomite as a precursor is a common mechanism in dolomite crystallization, suggesting the presence of kinetic barriers other than hydration of cations.