Hydrogeochemistry

The main scientific interest of the Environmental Mineralogy and Geochemistry Group at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz is basic and applied research on speciation and transformation of trace metals and metalloids during biogeochemical processes in both natural and anthropogenic environments.

Particular emphasis is on microscale process studies of contaminant retardation and immobilisation by minerals in soils and sediments, or waste material. Synchrotron X-ray techniques are the main analytical tool including nanotomography and XAS. Main emphasis is not only gathering of data sets for descriptive 2D and 3D speciation mapping, but use of the data for advanced Gibbs energy minimization and lattice Boltzmann equation modeling.