Salt mixtures in stone weathering

Abstract

Salt related weathering of stones has been attributed to pressures exerted by repeated cycles of crystallization within pores. Relative Humidity (RH) is a key driver for dissolution and crystallization processes. Despite the prevalence of salt mixtures in natural environments, most experimental work has focused on single salts. Thus, the identification of salt mixture composition and their behavior is necessary to understand weathering. Thermodynamic calculations are used to analyze several thousand realistic salt mixtures found in weathered stone. We identify two common mixture types and their behavior. From at least 85 salt species theoretically present, 14 common salts are identified that occur most frequently and their critical RH points are discussed. These findings have wide-reaching implications for understanding salt weathering processes and informing the design of experimental stone weathering research.