Advances in the Environmental Biogeochemistry of Manganese Oxides

Manganese (Mn) oxides are among the most reactive minerals in the earth's surface environment, and play a significant role in adsorption, co-precipitation and redox reactions, affecting biogeochemical cycles of numerous nutrients and contaminants. In addition, manganese oxides are widely applied as absorbents, ion sieves, chemical oxidants and catalysts for environmental remediation and pollution control. There are, however, still many aspects poorly understood in terms of the environmental geochemistry of manganese oxides, such as biogenic formation mechanisms, detailed crystal structure of nanocrystalline phases, electron transfer paths in redox reactions, adsorption mechanisms of contaminants on surfaces, physiochemical factors controlling the contents of structural Mn(III) and vacant sites that largely determine Mn oxide reactivity, and the role of Mn(III) in the above processes.

This book aims to bring together advances on manganese oxide environmental biogeochemistry from leading scientists in multiple disciplines, e.g., mineralogy, geochemistry, soil science and environmental engineering. A number of frontier research topics are included in the book, such as in-situ characterization of Mn oxide reactivity with As and Cr, kinetics and molecular-scale mechanisms of metal oxidation by mangnese oxides, mechanistic understanding of metal sorption through density function theory, the role of surface edge sites of birnessites in metal(loid) sorption, reactivity of natural crytomelane, pathways of phyllomanganate transformation to todorokite, water-oxidation catalysis by manganese oxides, in situ As immobilization using stabilized Fe-Mn binary oxides, and synthesis of Li ion-sieves from biogenic oxides and stability of colloidal Mn oxides. The book should be of interest to scientists and engineers in a broad range of disciplines, such as geochemistry, soil science, mineralogy, microbiology, materials science, and environment engineering, as well as graduate students who are engaged in research on manganese oxide biogeochemistry and the engineering application of Mn-bearing materials.

Xionghan Feng, a Professor of Soil Chemistry, received a Ph.D. in soil science and joined the faculty at the Huazhong Agricultural University in 2003. He spent more than two years at the University of Delaware in the Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN) as a visiting scientist through 2007 to 2012. His research focuses on mineralogy, reactivity and environmental behaviors of Fe, Mn and Al (hydr)oxides in soils.

Wei Li is a Professor of geochemistry at the Nanjing University in the Department of Earth Sciences. His research focuses on mineral-water interfacial geochemistry and soil metal biogeochemistry as well as the application of fundamental principles of geochemistry in soil remediation and water decontamination. Li holds a B.S. in chemistry from the Wuhan University, a M.S in environmental chemistry at the Research Center of Eco-Environmental Sciences of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Ph.D. in mineralogy and geochemistry from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He performed a postdoc at the University of Delaware in the Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN). He has published 26 papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature Communications, Environmental Science & Technology, and Geochemical Cosmochimical Acta.

Mengqiang Zhu is an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management. Mengqiang Zhu holds a B.S. in Environmental Engineering from North China Electric Power University, M.S. in Environmental Chemistry from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ph.D. in Environmental Soil Chemistry at the University of Delaware. After postdoctoral research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he joined the faculty at the University of Wyoming in 2013.

Donald L. Sparks is the S. Hallock du Pont Chair in Soil and Environmental Chemistry, Francis Alison Professor and Director of the Delaware Environmental Institute at the University of Delaware. He is internationally recognized for research on the kinetics of soil chemical processes, sorption mechanisms of metal(loid)s and nutrients at the mineral/water interface, and speciation of contaminants in soils. Sparks is the author of three textbooks, editor of several books, and author of numerous book chapters and 235 refereed papers.