Ice Converts Phenols into Persistent Mineral-Bound Polymers
- 1Department of Chemistry, Umeå University, Umeå SE 901 87, Sweden
- 2Université de Rennes, École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Rennes, CNRS, ISCR-UMR 6226, Rennes F-35000, France
- 3College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, China
Abstract
Freezing fundamentally alters how minerals transform dissolved phenols in cold environments. As water freezes, solutes are excluded from the crystal lattice and concentrated into microscopic pockets of unfrozen liquid, creating reaction conditions far more extreme than those of bulk solution. Here, we compare catechol oxidation on a key soil manganese oxide under freeze-thaw versus room-temperature conditions. Freezing redirects products from soluble humic-like substances to thermally stable, mineral-bound polymers. Freeze-thaw conditions removed over 50% of dissolved organic carbon within 24 h compared to less than 10% at room temperature, with solid-phase carbon increasing over 50-fold. The attenuation of the effect with increasing salinity is consistent with freeze-concentration as a key driver and indicates that the pathway should be strongest in freshwater and low-salinity frozen environments. Freeze-thaw conditions also converted preformed soluble products into mineral-bound forms, demonstrating that the process operates on a range of substrates. These findings reveal an unrecognized abiotic carbon stabilization pathway that could operate when microbial decomposition is suppressed by freezing with direct implications for carbon dynamics in permafrost and seasonally frozen environments.
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BibTeX
@article{rong2026converts,
title = {{Ice Converts Phenols into Persistent Mineral-Bound Polymers}},
author = {Yang Rong and Tao Luo and Tao Chen and Tra My Bui Thi and Khalil Hanna and Jean-François Boily},
journal = {Environmental Science and Technology},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1021/acs.est.6c05553},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05835005v1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Ice Converts Phenols into Persistent Mineral-Bound Polymers
AU - Yang Rong
AU - Tao Luo
AU - Tao Chen
AU - Tra My Bui Thi
AU - Khalil Hanna
AU - Jean-François Boily
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
JO - Environmental Science and Technology
DO - 10.1021/acs.est.6c05553
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05835005v1
AB - Freezing fundamentally alters how minerals transform dissolved phenols in cold environments. As water freezes, solutes are excluded from the crystal lattice and concentrated into microscopic pockets of unfrozen liquid, creating reaction conditions far more extreme than those of bulk solution. Here, we compare catechol oxidation on a key soil manganese oxide under freeze-thaw versus room-temperature conditions. Freezing redirects products from soluble humic-like substances to thermally stable, mineral-bound polymers. Freeze-thaw conditions removed over 50% of dissolved organic carbon within 24 h compared to less than 10% at room temperature, with solid-phase carbon increasing over 50-fold. The attenuation of the effect with increasing salinity is consistent with freeze-concentration as a key driver and indicates that the pathway should be strongest in freshwater and low-salinity frozen environments. Freeze-thaw conditions also converted preformed soluble products into mineral-bound forms, demonstrating that the process operates on a range of substrates. These findings reveal an unrecognized abiotic carbon stabilization pathway that could operate when microbial decomposition is suppressed by freezing with direct implications for carbon dynamics in permafrost and seasonally frozen environments.
SN - 0013-936X
SN - 1520-5851
ER -