Submarine hydrothermal vents occur over a wide depth range from a few meters to several thousands of meters. Most existing hydrothermal fluid samplers are focused on deep-sea environments and are not suited for collec...Submarine hydrothermal vents occur over a wide depth range from a few meters to several thousands of meters. Most existing hydrothermal fluid samplers are focused on deep-sea environments and are not suited for collecting shallow-water fluids. In this study, a new gas-tight sampler which can be easily deployed by both submersibles and scuba divers to collect fluid samples from both deep-sea and shallow-water hydrothermal vents is presented. The proposed sampler uses an electric control sampling valve for fluid collection and a system to measure and display the temperature of the hydrothermal fluid while sampling. It is capable of working in manual mode to be controlled via external signals, or in automatic mode to collect a fluid sample according to the temperature. The master-slave architecture of the electronic system makes the sampler flexible in meeting many different deployment requirements. The performance of the sampler has been demonstrated by preliminary field tests at a shallow-water hydrothermal vent site.展开更多
The issues of how to quickly collect seawater samples and of how to make sure that those samples truly reflect the in-situ information on gas composition and concentration have therefore become a hot but difficult top...The issues of how to quickly collect seawater samples and of how to make sure that those samples truly reflect the in-situ information on gas composition and concentration have therefore become a hot but difficult topic in the field of ocean technology.Most conventional seawater samplers only focus on collecting seawater itself,but take little consideration on gas preservation.A set of new oceanographic tools are presented for ocean resource exploration such as hydrothermal sulfide and gas hydrate,and for investigations on the processes and mechanisms of marine physical,chemical and biological evolutions.A gas-tight deep-sea water sampling system（GTWSS） is designed for the collection of deep-sea geochemical samples.This set of tools mainly consists of a conductivity temperature depth profiler（CTD）,release devices and gas-tight deep-sea water samplers（GTWS）.The GTWS is able to hold the gases in deep-sea water samples tightly,providing in-situ information on gas contents in the seawater samples and can be deployed on a routine wire-deployed CTD sampler for multi-layer discrete sampling of gas-tight seawater.Sea trials are performed successfully in 2008 and 2009,on a research vessel named HaiYang Si Hao in South China Sea,with the deepest trial depth 3 930 m.GTWSS is capable of quickly sampling 12 discrete gas-tight seawater samples（8.3 L per sample） during its single deployment.The head space method is employed to separate the gases from the seawater samples immediately after recovery of the seawater samples on the vessel.Field geochemical analysis is carried out by gaseous hydrocarbon sensors and an infrared gas analyzer.Results show that the concentrations of CH4 and CO2 in the seawater sampled by GTWSS are higher than those sampled by general non-gas-tight water samplers,thus confirming the gas tightness of GTWSS.Seawater samples can be collected quickly by using GTWSS,and GTWSS can keep the samples＇ integrity quite well.展开更多
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China （No. 41106081）, and the Science Fund for Creative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China （No. 51221004）
文摘Submarine hydrothermal vents occur over a wide depth range from a few meters to several thousands of meters. Most existing hydrothermal fluid samplers are focused on deep-sea environments and are not suited for collecting shallow-water fluids. In this study, a new gas-tight sampler which can be easily deployed by both submersibles and scuba divers to collect fluid samples from both deep-sea and shallow-water hydrothermal vents is presented. The proposed sampler uses an electric control sampling valve for fluid collection and a system to measure and display the temperature of the hydrothermal fluid while sampling. It is capable of working in manual mode to be controlled via external signals, or in automatic mode to collect a fluid sample according to the temperature. The master-slave architecture of the electronic system makes the sampler flexible in meeting many different deployment requirements. The performance of the sampler has been demonstrated by preliminary field tests at a shallow-water hydrothermal vent site.
基金supported by National Hi-tech Research and Development Program of China(863 Program,Grant Nos. 2006AA09A204-1,2006AA09Z222-1,2009AA09A20401-1)
文摘The issues of how to quickly collect seawater samples and of how to make sure that those samples truly reflect the in-situ information on gas composition and concentration have therefore become a hot but difficult topic in the field of ocean technology.Most conventional seawater samplers only focus on collecting seawater itself,but take little consideration on gas preservation.A set of new oceanographic tools are presented for ocean resource exploration such as hydrothermal sulfide and gas hydrate,and for investigations on the processes and mechanisms of marine physical,chemical and biological evolutions.A gas-tight deep-sea water sampling system（GTWSS） is designed for the collection of deep-sea geochemical samples.This set of tools mainly consists of a conductivity temperature depth profiler（CTD）,release devices and gas-tight deep-sea water samplers（GTWS）.The GTWS is able to hold the gases in deep-sea water samples tightly,providing in-situ information on gas contents in the seawater samples and can be deployed on a routine wire-deployed CTD sampler for multi-layer discrete sampling of gas-tight seawater.Sea trials are performed successfully in 2008 and 2009,on a research vessel named HaiYang Si Hao in South China Sea,with the deepest trial depth 3 930 m.GTWSS is capable of quickly sampling 12 discrete gas-tight seawater samples（8.3 L per sample） during its single deployment.The head space method is employed to separate the gases from the seawater samples immediately after recovery of the seawater samples on the vessel.Field geochemical analysis is carried out by gaseous hydrocarbon sensors and an infrared gas analyzer.Results show that the concentrations of CH4 and CO2 in the seawater sampled by GTWSS are higher than those sampled by general non-gas-tight water samplers,thus confirming the gas tightness of GTWSS.Seawater samples can be collected quickly by using GTWSS,and GTWSS can keep the samples＇ integrity quite well.
