Group Updates
Nov 2023: Avenue Magazine names Ben one of Calgary's Top 40 Under 40.
Summer/Fall 2023: New postdocs Bohyun Hwang and Chris Tino join the reactive transport group.
01 July 2023: Ben began research and scholarship leave (sabbatical) at Cambridge University, UK, which will last until June 2024.
09 April 2023: 2022-2023 Gallagher Fellow Dr. Fernando Gomez, from Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Tierra (Cordoba, Argentina), arrives to spend a month interacting with RTG members and the Department of Geoscience.
15 March 2023: New postdoc, Patrick Phelps, arrives from Rice University to work on reactive transport modeling in basalts.
17 Feb 2023: Simone Pujatti successfully defends his PhD thesis "The Controls of Porosity on Mineral Alteration Processes in the Shallow Oceanic Lithosphere at Slow-Spreading Ridges"
Jan/Feb 2023: A string of Reactive Transport Group papers are published in succession:
Simone's paper "Weathering-driven porosity generation in altered oceanic peridotites in Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Juan Carlos' paper "Experimental study on plagioclase dissolution rates under conditions relevant to mineral carbonation of seafloor basalts" in Chemical Geology
Ben's paper "Observational constraints on the process and products of Martian serpentinization" in Science Advances.
20 Dec 2022: Taylor Smith successfully defends her MSc thesis "The effects of water-rock interactions on the permeability of the Precambrian Basement in Southern Saskatchewan"
11-15 Dec 2022: Ben and Christiaan attend and present at the 2022 American Geophysical Union conference in Chicago.
7 Nov 2022: Former postdoc Yury Klyukin's paper "Effect of boiler feed water composition on inorganic scaling in Once-Through Steam Generators estimated using a Monte Carlo modelling approach" accepted for publication in Applied Geochemistry.
25 Oct 2022: New Eyes High postdoc Arthi Gopalakrishnan arrives at UCalgary to work on the PEACH (Practical Electrochemical Air Capture with Hydrogen) project.
11 Oct 2022: Ben receives the Mineralogical Society of America award and gives an associated talk at the Geological Society of America fall meeting (MSA Award)
11 Aug 2022: Dapo's paper "Mineral surface area accessibility and sensitivity constraints on carbon mineralization in basaltic aquifers" is accepted for publication in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta
25 July 11, 12 Aug 2022: Ben's participation in the Mars Science Laboratory mission is featured on CTV morning news, evening news, and in UToday.
1 Jul 2022: Dapo Awolayo leaves the RTG to take up his role as Assistant Professor at McMaster University.
23 Jun 2022: Ben is awarded the UCalgary Faculty of Science Early Career Research Excellence Award
08 Jun 2022: Dapo and Ben's paper "PyGeochemCalc: A python package for geochemical thermodynamic calculations from ambient to deep Earth conditions" is accepted for publication in Chemical Geology!
04 May 2022: Serhat Sevgen joins the group as a PhD student!
29 April 2022: Qin Zhang successfully defends her PhD thesis From Greensands to Green Technology: Examination of Carbon Dioxide Storage Potential in Glauconitic Sandstones!
8 April 2022: Ben gives a presentation "Marine carbonate alkalinity and the potential of large-scale submarine basalt carbonation" about his work in the Solid Carbon and PEACH projects as part of the "Waves, widgets, and socially desirable technologies: Challenges and opportunities in ocean-based CDR" webinar.
5 April 2022: Qin Zhang's paper, "Evaluation of the Potential of Glauconite in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin for Large-Scale Carbon Dioxide Mineralization" is accepted for publication in International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.
1 April 2022: Drew Syverson's paper about P mobility on anoxic water worlds (with which Ben was involved) is featured in a Commentary in Geophysical Research Letters
21-25 March 2022: The RTG hosts two outstanding Calgary high school students, Eric You and Elspeth Bruce, for a weeklong STEM Internship. With their experiments, they directly captured CO2 from the lab atmosphere and made it into solid carbonate!
20 March 2022: Ben gives an invited talk "CO2 mineralization in basalt from nanopore to global scales" at the American Chemical Society Spring Meeting
9 March 2022: Ben gives an invited presentation "Geochemical perspectives on risks and uncertainties of underground H2 storage" as part of the Canadian Standards Association webinar on Underground Storage of Hydrogen
15 Feb 2022: Ben's work with the Solid Carbon project is featured in University Affairs.
10 Jan 2022: Ben and the Solid Carbon team are featured in an article in the National Observer.
12-17 Dec 2021: Ben and Juan Carlos present and attend the AGU fall meeting in New Orleans.
28 Oct 2021: Emily Creaser's (U of A) paper "A Model for the Solubility of Anhydrite in H2O-NaCl fluids from 25 to 800 °C, 0.1 to 1400 MPa, and 0 to 60 wt% NaCl: Applications to Hydrothermal Ore-forming Systems" is accepted for publication in Chemical Geology.
8 Oct 2021: Ben is featured as a guest on Quirks and Quarks to discuss the Solid Carbon project.
20 September: Drew Syverson's (Yale) paper "Nutrient Supply to Planetary Biospheres from Anoxic Weathering of Mafic Oceanic Crust" is accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.
13 Sept 2021: Ben and the Solid Carbon Project are featured in Victoria News.
11 Sept 2021: Congratulations to Yury and team for having the paper "Mineralogical characterization and thermodynamic modelling of scales formed in once through steam generators" accepted for publication in Fuel
10 Sept 2021: Ben and the Solid Carbon project are featured in the Vancouver Sun
9 Sept 2021: Ben and the Solid Carbon project are featured on CHEKNews
3 Sept 2021: Ben chats with the Reviewer 2 Does Geoengineering podcast
20 Aug 2021: Ben, Dapo, and Calista have their paper Alkalinity Generation Constraints on Basalt Carbonation for Carbon Dioxide Removal at the Gigaton-per-year Scale accepted in ES&T
9 Jul 2021: Congratulations to Simone on having his first thesis chapter accepted for publication in Lithos!
5-9 Jul 2021: Many members of the RTG attend, chair sessions, and present their research at the 2021 Goldschmidt conference
17 May 2021:Congrats to Qin for having her first thesis chapter accepted for publication in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta!
13 May 2021: Congrats to Zhengqiang for having his thesis paper accepted for publication in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta!
05 May 2021: Our new ThermoScientific Phenom Pro G6 Scanning Electron Microscope is fully operational! See Lab page for a photo.
22 April 2021 (Earth Day!): RTG and Solid Carbon research featured in Axios
1 April 2021: Dapo is awarded a prestigious NSERC postdoctoral fellowship!
26 March 2021: Zhengqiang Che successfully defends his MSc thesis!
15 March 2021: Ben receives notification that he has been granted tenure and promotion to Associate Professor, effective 1 July 2021!
15 Feb 2021: Dr. Alec Hutchings begins as a postdoc with the RTG!
18 Jan 2021: Congratulations to Jasmine Chase on having her paper "A series of data-driven hypotheses for inferring biogeochemical conditions in alkaline lakes and their deposits based on the behavior of Mg and SiO2" accepted in Minerals !
7 Nov 2020: Dr. Juan Carlos de Obeso begins as a postdoc with the RTG!
30 Oct 2020: Jasmine Chase presents her abstract "Several testable hypotheses for inferring biogeochemical conditions in paleolake waters based on the chemistry of Mg-silicate clays at the Geological Society of America 2020 Connects Online meeting.
17 Sept 2020: Ben gives an invited talk "A seawater throttle on H2 production in Precambrian serpentinizing systems" at the (virtual) National Academy of Sciences Council on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences fall meeting.
8 Sept 2020: Yi Yang, Bradley Earl, and Taylor Smith join the RTG.
21 Aug 2020: Maria's paper is published in Geochimica!
23 Jun 2020: Ben's paper, co-authored with Nick Tosca and Bill Seyfried, is featured in UToday, Geochemical News, and (1 July 2020) The Gauntlet.
31 May 2020: Ben's paper "Contributions of visible and invisible pores to reactive transport in dolomite" co-authored with Andrew Luhmann, Xiang-Zhao Kong, Brian Bagley, Diego Alba-Venero, Nolan Mitchell, Martin Saar, and Bill Seyfried is accepted for publication in Geochemical Perspectives Letters.
28 May 2020: Dr. Rachel Lauer and Ben sit down (via zoom) to discuss the Solid Carbon project with Meagan Hampel for the cybera blog.
1 May 2020: Summer undergrad researchers Hannah Robutka, Jasmine Chase, and Calista Brown join the RTG!
14 April 2020: Sofia's paper is accepted for publication is accepted in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta!
24 Feb 2020: Simone passes his PhD candidacy exam with flying colors!
21 Feb 2020: Ben's paper (Tim Kiesel's MS thesis from UMN) is accepted in Applied Geochemistry
1 January 2020: Ben begins a 2-year term as Editor for the Geocemical Society's weekly email newsbrief Geochemical News.
30 December 2019: Ben's paper with Marie Edmonds,Kayla Iacovino, and Yves Moussallam is published in American Mineralogist. This paper was part of the Deep Carbon Observatory Earth in 5 Reactions effort.
19 December 2019: Qin passes her PhD candidacy exam with flying colors!
12-15 December: Sofia and Jacob Forshaw travel to the Candian Light Source to perform high-resolution x-ray computed tomography measurements.
11 December: Ben gives a talk "Hisingerite-forming serpentinization in the Duluth Complex (USA): A rare terrestrial analogue for serpentinization on Mars" and Simone a poster "Transient Nanoporosity at the Reaction Front in Serpentinized Peridotite" at the 2019 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
6-7 November: The Raman Bar is open! Our new, CFI-funded Horiba XPlora Plus Raman microscope is installed in our lab. Stay tuned for awesome mineralogical and fluid data!
24-27 October: Ben attends (and presents at) Deep Carbon 2019: Launching the Next Decade of Deep Carbon Science in Washington, DC. More details here!
16-20 October: Ben and Simone Travel to the NIST Center for Neutron Reserach to perform Very Small Neutron Scattering (VSANS) and Ultra Small Angle Neutron Scattering (USANS) on silicfied komatiites with NCNR scientist Paul Butler. Lots of great data from this trip!
4-7 October: Ben, Shane Bossaer, Eric Mott, Rachel Lauer, Alex Paquette, and others travel to the Cariboo Plateau for an integrated geophysics, geochemistry, hydrogeology, and geomicrobiology sampling expedition.
27 September: Pacific Institution for Climate Solutions Solid Carbon initiative, in which Ben Tutolo and Rachel Lauer are key players, is funded!
4-5 September: Sofia and Qin travel to the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon to acquire x-ray computed tomography data on carbonate samples.
19-23 August: Ben ("The Contribution of Nanoscale Pores to Anomalous Trace Element Release during Dolomite Dissolution"), Maria ("Experimentally Constraining Rates of Sepiolite Growth at Ambient Conditions"), and Sofia ("Examining the Role of Aqueous Organo-Silica Complexes on Silicification during Carbonate Diagenesis") attend and present at the 2019 V.M. Goldschmidt Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
15-22 July: Dr. Linda Luquot (CNRS, Montpellier) visits the RTG lab to develop collaborations (and enjoy the natural splendors of Alberta!)
23-28 June 2019: Ben and Simone visit Minnesota to sample Duluth Complex troctolites + meet with Bill Seyfried (UMN) and Gary Byerly (LSU) to discuss Barberton greenstone rocks.
14 June: Ben's paper with Peter Scheuermann and Bill Seyfried (both UMN) Anhydrite solubility in low-density hydrothermal fluids: experimental measurements and thermodynamic calculations is accepted for publication in Chemical Geology.
June 2019: A big congratulations to Simone for being awarded a 2019 Geological Society of America Student Research Grant!
17-20 May 2019: Ben is performing XANES analyses with Clancy Jiang (U. Oxford) at the Diamond Light Source in the United Kingdom. Stay tuned for results!
May 2019: UCalgary undergraduates Simone Shelley, Dilpreet Khehra, Karim Kandil, and Nolan Mitchell and course-based MSc studen Yixuan Zhou join the RTG for summer and/or senior thesis projects.
30 April: Ben receives the Department of Geoscience Faculty Research Excellence Award
30 April: Ben's paper co-authored with Anna Harrison and Don Depaolo, The Role of Reactive Transport Modeling in Geologic Carbon Storage is published in Elements.
4 April: Simone, Qin, Maria, and Stephen all present their research at GeoREX.
11 January: Ben's paper, Serpentine–Hisingerite Solid Solution in Altered Ferroan Peridotite and Olivine Gabbro co-authored with Bernard Evans and Scott Kuehner from the University of Washington is published in Minerals. open-access link
10-14 December: RTG members Ben, Qin, Simone, and Adam attend and present their research at the AGU 2018 Fall meeting in Washington, DC.
29 November: The RTG and the UCalgary Department of Geoscience host Dr. Woodward Fischer for the 2018 Tom Oliver Lecture. Maria, Stephen, Qin, Adam, and Simone all present their research at the accompanying poster session.
26 October: Ben gives an ATLAS seminar at the University of Alberta titled "Serpentinization: Reactive transport processes and hydrothermal fluxes."
24 October: The Coy Anaerobic Chamber is installed in ES 557. Look out redox-sensitive experiments - here we come!
Also, The RTG and UCalgary Department of Geoscience host Anna Harrison (Queens University) for a Department seminar.
14 October: Ben gives an invited plenary seminar "Nanoscale perspectives on reactive transport processes in the geosciences" at the 2018 Canadian Institute of Neutron Scattering Annual General Meeting in Windsor, Ontario.
10 October: A huge congratulations to Simone for receiving a highly competitive InterRidge Student and Postdoctoral Fellowship! This fellowship will fund Simone's travel to the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands to work on serpentinites in collaboration with Dr. Oliver Pluemper.
15 September: GLGY 403/602 Aqueous Geochemistry field trip to sample sulfur springs at Canyon Creek in Kananaskis Country. A total of 48 students and instructors spent the day at Canyon Creek. RTG members joined the field trip as instructors/field assistants (Ben, Maria) and class participants (Qin, Simone). Samples and data acquired during this day-long field trip to Canyon Creek form the foundation of the experiential learning components of the aqueous geochemistry class.
12 September: Ben attends his first meeting as a member of the Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) Ocean Observatory Council, representing the Geochemistry, Chemical Sedimentology, and Marine Chemistry interests of ONC science users.
10-18 September: David Janecky visits the RTG to develop research collaborations with RTG group members.
6 September: Stephen Schroeder joins the RTG to work on his undergraduate thesis research.
22 August - 5 September: Ben onboard the Chikyu logging and sampling serpentinite drill cores as part of the Oman Drilling Project .
12-18 August 2018: Ben chairs a session, "Seafloor diagenesis, hydrothermal processes, and biogeochemistry: Implications for the Earth system through time" and presents an invited talk "A Seawater Throttle on Hydrothermal Fe Oxidation in the Ancient Oceanic Lithosphere" at the Goldschmidt conference in Boston, USA
6 August 2018: Tosca et al. paper, Magnetite authigenesis and the warming of early Mars (co-authored by Ben) is published online in Nature Geoscience! (Link)
29 July-11 August: Clancy Jiang (DPhil student, University of Oxford) visits the RTG to work on reactive transport modelling of early Earth geochemistry.
3 July 2018: Maria Arizaleta joins the RTG to perform experiments examining the nucleation and growth of Mg-silicate scales.
19-25 June 2018: Simone and Ben head to BC to sample some serpentinites and some alkaline lakes.
9 May 2018: It's alive! First successful hydrothermal flow-through experiments examining mineral growth:
May 2018: Qin Zhang (PhD Student), Simone Pujatti (PhD Student) and Adam Mitton (PURE Award Undergraduate) join the group!
5-6 April 2018: Ben attends (and presents at) the Deep Carbon Cycle workshop at the University of Cambridge (sponsored by the Sloan Foundation/Deep Carbon Observatory)
21-23 March 2018: Ben attends (and presents at) the Deep Carbon Observatory Earth in 5 Reactions workshop
18-20 March 2018: Ben attends the Ocean Networks Canada planning meeting for the Endeavour cabled observatory
3 February 2018: Ben and Nick Tosca's paper "Experimental examination of the Mg-silicate-carbonate system at ambient temperature: Implications for alkaline chemical sedimentation and lacustrine carbonate formation" published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
January 2018: Both Jenna and Alicia have gotten their first experiments going in the lab. Stay tuned for results!!
11-15 December 2017: Ben will attend the AGU fall meeting to present a talk "Serpentinization as a reactive transport process: The brucite silicification reaction" and chair a session, "Integrated Constraints on the Geochemistry and Hydrogeology of Oceanic and Continental Hydrothermal Systems" with co-chair Drew Syverson.
10 December 2017: Ben's paper, "Serpentinization as a reactive transport process: The brucite silicification reaction" with co-authors Andrew Luhmann, Nick Tosca, and Bill Seyfried accepted in Earth and Planetary Science Letters!
4 Nov 2017: Syverson et al. "Serpentinization of olivine at 300 °C and 500 bars: An experimental study examining the role of silica on the reaction path and oxidation state of iron" co-authored by Ben accepted for publication in Chemical Geology!
28-30 October 2017: High-resolution x-ray computed tomography beam time at Argonne National Lab!
22-25 October 2017: Ben will attend the GSA fall meeting in Seattle to give a talk "Experimental examination of the Mg-silicate system at ambient temperature: Implications for alkaline chemical sedimentation and lacustrine carbonate formation
11-13 October 2017: Ben attends the IODP-sponsored workshop, "Drilling into Young Oceanic Crust for Subseafloor Observations at Axial Seamount" at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, New York
September 2017: U of C undergrads Jenna Helmer and Alicia Perkins join the Tutolo Group to perform their honors thesis research.
28 August - 2 September 2017: Ben attends the Deep Carbon Observatory Early Career Workshop at Etna, Italy
13-18 August 2017: Ben presents a poster "Veinlet-Scale Reactive Transport during Serpentinization: Implications for H2 Fluxes from Oceanic Serpentinites" and chairs a session, "Seafloor Hydrothermal Processes on Modern and Ancient Earth: Implications for Life, Elemental Budgets, and Oxidation States of the Lithosphere-Hydrosphere-Atmosphere System" with co-chairs Drew Syverson and Nick Pester