Volatile inventories in clathrate hydrates formed in the primordial nebula.

• Published in: Faraday Discussions
• Main Authors: Mousis, Olivier, Lunine, Jonathan I., Picaud, Sylvain, Cordier, Daniel
• Other Authors: Univers, Théorie, Interfaces, Nanostructures, Atmosphère et environnement, Molécules (UMR 6213) (UTINAM), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Franche-Comté (UFC), Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté COMUE (UBFC)-Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté COMUE (UBFC), Institut de Physique de Rennes (IPR), Université de Rennes (UR)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2010
• Subjects: [SDV.BBM.BP]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Biochemistry; Molecular Biology/Biophysics; permafrost
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00555848; https://doi.org/10.1039/C003658G

International audience The examination of ambient thermodynamic conditions suggests that clathrate hydrates could exist in the Martian permafrost, on the surface and in the interior of Titan, as well as in other icy satellites. Clathrate hydrates are probably formed in a significant fraction of planetesimals in the solar system. Thus, these crystalline solids may have been accreted in comets, in the forming giant planets and in their surrounding satellite systems. In this work, we use a statistical thermodynamic model to investigate the composition of clathrate hydrates that may have formed in the primordial nebula. In our approach, we consider the formation sequence of the different ices occurring during the cooling of the nebula, a reasonable idealization of the process by which volatiles are trapped in planetesimals. We then determine the fractional occupancies of guests in each clathrate hydrate formed at a given temperature. The major ingredient of our model is the description of the guest-clathrate hydrate interaction by a spherically averaged Kihara potential with a nominal set of parameters, most of which are fitted to experimental equilibrium data. Our model allows us to find that Kr, Ar and N2 can be efficiently encaged in clathrate hydrates formed at temperatures higher than approximately 48.5 K in the primitive nebula, instead of forming pure condensates below 30 K. However, we find at the same time that the determination of the relative abundances of guest species incorporated in these clathrate hydrates strongly depends on the choice of the parameters of the Kihara potential and also on the adopted size of cages. Indeed, by testing different potential parameters, we have noted that even minor dispersions between the different existing sets can lead to non-negligible variations in the determination of the volatiles trapped in clathrate hydrates formed in the primordial nebula. However, these variations are not found to be strong enough to reverse the relative abundances between the different ...