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Abstract Knowledge of carbonate compounds under high pressure inside Earth is key to understanding the internal structure of the Earth, the deep carbon cycle and major geological events. Here we use first-principles simulations to calculate the structure and elasticity of CaC2O5-minerals with different symmetries under high pressure. Our calculations show that CaC2O5-minerals represent a group of low-density low-seismic-wave velocity mantle minerals. Changes in seismic wave velocity caused by the phase transformation of CaC2O5-Cc to CaC2O5-I $$\bar{4}$$ 4 ¯ 2d (CaC2O5-C2-l) agree with wave velocity discontinuity at a depth of 660 km in the mantle transition zone. Moreover, when CaC2O5-Fdd2 transforms into CaC2O5-C2 under 70 GPa, its shear wave velocity decreases by 7.4%, and its density increases by 5.8%, which is consistent with the characteristics of large low-shear-velocity provinces (LLSVPs). Furthermore, the shear wave velocity of CaC2O5-I $$\bar{4}$$ 4 ¯ 2d is very similar to that of cubic Ca-perovskite, which is one of the main constituents of the previously detected LLSVPs. Therefore, we propose that CaC2O5 and its high-pressure polymorphs may be a main component of LLSVPs.

To understand the storage and transport of H2 in the Earth’s interior, the adsorption behaviors of H2 in the slit-like pore of quartz under different conditions were calculated by the grand canonical Monte Carlo method. The Poisson distributions of interaction energy show unimodal, indicating that the adsorption behavior is mainly affected by van der Waals interaction between molecular H2 and quartz, the adsorption potential energy increases, and when the pressure increases, the temperature and pore size decrease. Isosteric heat of adsorption is in the range of −5.0 to −1.7 kJ/mol, which indicates that the adsorption behavior belongs to physical adsorption. The results of isosteric heat of adsorption show that strong energy exchange occurs in the H2-quartz system at the initial stage of adsorption, which may affect the stability of quartz. The average isosteric heat of adsorption linearly increases with temperature. However, the increasing rate of average isosteric heat of adsorption decreases with the increase in the pore size. Adsorption snapshots show most of the H2 distributed randomly and there is no obvious adsorption layer of H2 in the pores. Excess adsorption amount increases with the decrease in temperature and the increase in pressure and pore size. The change rate of excess adsorption amount with temperature increases with the increase in pressure. Similarly, with the increase in pressure, the change rate of excess adsorption amount with pore size decreases slowly at first, then increases rapidly, and finally decreases. The results are helpful to reveal the migration and formation of H2 reservoirs in the Earth’s interior.

An equation of state (EOS) of CH4-N2 fluid mixtures in terms of Helmholtz free energy has been developed by using four mixing parameters, which can reproduce the pressure-volume-temperature-composition (PVTx) and vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) properties of CH4-N2 fluid mixtures. The average absolute deviation of all the PVTx data available up to 673.15 K and 1380 bar from this EOS is 0.38%. Combining this EOS of CH4-N2 fluid mixtures and the EOS of CH4-CO2 and CO2-N2 fluid mixtures in our previous work, an EOS of CO2-CH4-N2 fluid mixtures has been developed, which is named ZMS EOS. The ZMS EOS can calculate all thermodynamic properties of ternary CO2-CH4-N2 fluid mixtures and the average absolute deviation of the PVTx data from the ZMS EOS is 0.40% for the CO2-CH4-N2 system. The ZMS EOS can be applied to calculate excess enthalpies of CO2-CH4-N2 fluid mixtures, predict the solubility of CO2-CH4-N2 fluid mixtures in brine and water, and quantitatively estimate the impact of the impurities (CH4 and N2) on the CO2 storage capacity in the CO2 capture and storage (CCS) processes. The ZMS EOS can also be applied to calculate the isochores of CO2-CH4-N2 system in the studies of fluid inclusions. All Fortran computer codes and Origin drawing projects in this paper can be obtained freely from the corresponding author.