Preheated shock experiments in the molten CaAl2Si2O8-CaFeSi2O6- CaMgSi2O6 ternary: A test for linear mixing of liquid volumes at high pressure and temperature

[1] We performed 17 new shock wave experiments on preheated (1673 K) hedenbergite liquid (CaFeSi2O6) and two model basalt liquids (an equimolar binary mix of CaAl2Si2O8 + CaFeSi2O6 and an equimolar ternary mix of CaAl2Si2O8 + CaFeSi2O6 +CaMgSi2O6) in order to determine their equations of state (EOS). Ambient pressure density measurements on these and other Fe-bearing silicate liquids indicate that FeO has a partial molar volume that is highly dependent on composition, which leads to large errors in estimates of the densities of Fe-bearing liquids at ambient pressure based on an ideal mixing of any fixed set of end-member liquids. We formulated a series of mixing tests using the EOS determined in this study to examine whether ideal mixing of volumes might nevertheless suffice to describe the ternary system CaAl2Si2O8-CaFeSi2O6-CaMgSi2O6 at high temperature and pressure. The ideal mixing null hypothesis is rejected; compositional variations in partial molar volume of FeO appear to extend to high pressure. Only densities of Fe-bearing liquid mixtures with oxide mole fraction of FeO less than 0.06 can be adequately approximated using an ideal solution.