From the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin Online News.

Posted on Monday, January 18, 2010

Whitman College electron microscope to aid research
The SEM can magnify from six to one million times. It can zoom in on something as small as 3 microns, or three-millionths of a meter.
Maria P. Gonzalez
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

WALLA WALLA -- Whitman College student Courtney Porter was among the first students at Whitman this month to utilize a $408,000 scanning electron microscope, or SEM, secured at the college a few weeks ago.

Porter is taking a close look at basalt fragments to help determine what may have happened underground long ago, and to also help make predictions about what may occur when carbon dioxide is added.

Whitman College faculty sought the SEM through a National Science Foundation grant. The new instrument replaces a more than 20-year-old microscope that relied on obsolete Polaroid film.



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Clay_in_basalt_cavity_web
Courtesy photos from Whitman College
The microscope shows tiny clay minerals inside a hole in a basalt that is roughly 17 million years old (Grande Ronde basalt at 2,770 feet depth in Wallula dril hole from the C02 sequestration pilot project). Researchers are trying to identify the clays and analyze their chemistry. Further research will determine whether these clays will enhance or inhibit the reaction between the pumped in CO2 and the basalt. This reaction is key because it forms stable calcium carbonate which locks the co2 in the rock. There'd be no chance of it escaping to the atmosphere.