  The Earth and other rocky bodies in the inner solar system contain
significantly less carbon than the primordial materials that seeded their
formation. These carbon-poor objects include the parent bodies of primitive
meteorites, suggesting that at least one process responsible for solid-phase
carbon depletion was active prior to the early stages of planet formation.
Potential mechanisms include the erosion of carbonaceous materials by photons
or atomic oxygen in the surface layers of the protoplanetary disk. Under
photochemically generated favorable conditions, these reactions can deplete the
near-surface abundance of carbon grains and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by
several orders of magnitude on short timescales relative to the lifetime of the
disk out to radii of ~20-100+ au from the central star depending on the form of
refractory carbon present. Due to the reliance of destruction mechanisms on a
high influx of photons, the extent of refractory carbon depletion is quite
sensitive to the disk's internal radiation field. Dust transport within the
disk is required to affect the composition of the midplane. In our current
model of a passive, constant-alpha disk, where alpha = 0.01, carbon grains can
be turbulently lofted into the destructive surface layers and depleted out to
radii of ~3-10 au for 0.1-1 um grains. Smaller grains can be cleared out of the
planet-forming region completely. Destruction may be more effective in an
actively accreting disk or when considering individual grain trajectories in
non-idealized disks.
