Carboxylic and Dicarboxylic Acids Extracted from Crushed Magnesium Oxide Single Crystals

Details Carboxylic and Dicarboxylic Acids Extracted from Crushed Magnesium Oxide Single Crystals Carboxylic and Dicarboxylic Acids Extracted from Crushed Magnesium Oxide Single Crystals

Oct 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999oleb...29..489f&link_type=abstract

Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, v. 29, Issue 5, p. 489-509 (1999).

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Scientific paper

Carboxylic and dicarboxylic acids (glycolic, oxalic, malonic and succinic) have been extracted with tetrahydrofuran (THF) and H_2O from large synthetic MgO crystals, crushed to a medium fine powder. The extracts were characterized by infrared spectroscopy and ^1H-NMR. The THF extracts were derivatized with tert-butyldimethylsilyl (t-BDMS) for GC-MS analysis. A single crystal separated from the extract was used for an x-ray structure analysis, giving the monoclinic unit cell, space group P2_1/c with a_o = 5.543 Å, b_o = 8.845 Å, c_o = 5.086 Å, and β = 91.9°, consistent with β-succinic acid, HOOC(CH_2)COOH. The amount of extracted acids is estimated to be of the order of 0.1 to 0.5 mg g^-1 MgO. The MgO crystals from which these organic acids were extracted grew from the 2860 °C hot melt, saturated with CO/CO_2 and H_2O, thereby incorporating small amounts of the gaseous components to form a solid solution (ss) with MgO. Upon cooling, the ss becomes supersaturated, causing solute carbon and other solute species to segregate not only to the surface but also internally, to dislocations and subgrain boundaries. The organic acids extracted from the MgO crystals after crushing appear to derive from these segregated solutes that formed C-C, C-H and C-O bonds along dislocations and other defects in the MgO structure, leading to entities that can generically be described as (H_xC_yO_z)^n-. The processes underlying the formation of these precursors are fundamental in nature and expected to be operational in any minerals, preferentially those with dense structures, that crystallized in H_2O-CO_2-laden environments. This opens the possibility that common magmatic and metamorphic rocks when weathering at the surface of a tectonically active planet like Earth may be an important source of abiogenically formed complex organic compounds.

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