Inorganic calcium carbonate precipitation from natural seawater and salinewater at various pH values was carried out experimentally. The results show the clear positiverelationships between boron concentration and δ^(11)B of inorganic calcium carbonate with the pH ofnatural seawater and saline water. However, the variations of boron isotopic fractionation betweeninorganic calcite and seawater/saline water with pH are inconsistent with the hypothesis thatB(OH)_4^- is the dominant species incorporated into the biogenic calcite structure. The isotopicfractionation factors a between synthetic calcium carbonate precipitate and parent solutionsincrease systematically as pH increases, from 0.9884 at pH 7.60 to 1.0072 at pH 8.60 for seawaterand from 0.9826 at pH 7.60 to 1.0178 at pH 8.75 for saline water. An unusual boron isotopicfractionation factor of larger than 1 in synthetic calcium carbonate precipitated fromseawater/saline water at higher pH is observed, which implies that a substantial amount of theisotopically heavier B(OH)_3 species must be incorporated preferentially into synthetic inorganiccarbonate. The results propose that the incorporation of B(OH)_3 is attributed to the formation ofMg(OH)_2 at higher pH of calcifying microenvironment during the synthetic calcium carbonateprecipitation. The preliminary experiment of Mg(OH)_2 precipitated from artificial seawater showsthat heavier ^(11)B is enriched in Mg(OH)_2 precipitation, which suggests that isotopically heavierB(OH)_3 species incorporated preferentially into Mg(OH)_2 precipitation. This result cannot beapplied to explain the boron isotopic fractionation of marine bio-carbonate because of thepossibility that the unusual environment in this study appears in formation of marine bio-carbonateis infinitesimal. We, however, must pay more attention to this phenomenon observed in this study,which accidentally appears in especially natural environment.
XIAO Yingkai1,2,LI Shizhen1,WEI Haizhen1,SUN Aide1,ZHOU Weijian2 & LIU Weiguo2 1. Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Xining 810008,China
