Chemical Fractionation Modeling of Plumes Indicates a Gas-rich, Moderately Alkaline Enceladus Ocean

Abstract

Enceladus harbors an ocean beneath its ice crust that erupts spectacular plumes from fissures at the south pole. The plume composition was measured by the Cassini spacecraft, and provides evidence for the ocean’s gas content, salinity, pH, and potential for life. Understanding the ocean’s composition is complicated by physicochemical processes that alter the plume composition during eruption, such as water vapor condensation in the icy fissures and gas exsolution from the ocean surface. We developed a model that includes key fractionation processes, in particular fractionation during gas exsolution, which has not been previously considered. Our model predicts a moderately alkaline (pH 7.95–9.05), gas-rich ocean (∼10−5–10−3 molal) with high concentrations of ammonium ions (10−2–10−1 molal). Our derived dissolved gas concentrations are higher than in recent studies because we account for gas exsolution, which depletes gases in the plume compared to the ocean, and because our model conserves mass flow rates between gas exsolution from the ocean and eruption from the tiger stripe fissures. We find carbon dioxide and hydrogen concentrations that could provide sufficient chemical energy for oceanic life in the form of hydrogenotrophic methanogens. Carbon dioxide concentrations of 10−5–10−3 molal indicate a more Earth-like pH than the pH ∼8.5–13.5 in previous studies. The inferred bulk ammonium and total inorganic carbon concentrations are consistent with cometary levels. This corroborates evidence from cometary deuterium-hydrogen (D/H) ratios that Enceladus formed from comet-like planetesimals. Our results suggest a gas-rich ocean that inherited its high volatile concentrations from comet-like building blocks.