| Titre | Fine Fraction Indicator Mineral Signatures of Porphyry, VMS and other deposits |
| Auteur | Lougheed, H D; McClenaghan, M B; Layton-Matthews, D |
| Source | L'Association géologique du Canada-L'Association minéralogique du Canada, Réunion annuelle conjointe, Recueil des résumés vol. 40, 2017. |
| Année | 2017 |
| Séries alt. | Secteur des sciences de la Terre, Contribution externe 20160430 |
| Éditeur | Association géologique du Canada |
| Éditeur | Association minéralogique du Canada |
| Réunion | Geological Association of Canada - Mineralogical Association of Canada Joint Annual Meeting; Kingston; CA; mai 14-18, 2017 |
| Document | livre |
| Lang. | anglais |
| Media | papier; en ligne; numérique |
| Formats | pdf |
| Sujets | éléments d'indice; prospection minière; méthodes d'exploration; diamant; or; métaux de base; minéraux métalliques; minéralogie; géologie générale |
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| Programme | Étude des gîtes porphyriques, Initiative géoscientifique ciblée (IGC-4) |
| Liens | Online - En ligne
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| Résumé | (disponible en anglais seulement)
The use of indicator mineral methods for mineral exploration in glaciated terrain has been slowly expanding since the 1960s when they were first used for gold
and diamond exploration. Today, indicator minerals are used for exploration for a broad range of commodities including diamonds, gold, PGE, and base metals. For indicator minerals to be effectively recovered from till samples, they must be
sufficiently dense to allow separation and concentration from till using gravity methods. Indicator minerals are generally present in low concentrations within till (ppb levels), and therefore large samples (10-20 kg) are commonly necessary to obtain
significant and useful numbers of grains in a sample. After density separation, the resulting heavy mineral concentrate (HMC) samples are sieved to a desired fraction for examination under a binocular microscope.
Grain size has traditionally been
a limiting factor on analysis, as material smaller than 0.250 mm is too small to manipulate accurately and increasing grain counts make thorough examination impractical. This study plans to utilize a scanning electron microscope equipped with an
energy dispersive x-ray spectrometer (EDS) and Mineral Liberation Analysis (MLA) automated quantitative mineralogy software to enable rapid quantification of the modal mineralogy and grain size/shape characteristics of <0.250 mm HMC.
The first
phase of study has focused on the handling and effective separation of <0.250 mm HMC material into meaningful size fractions. The fine grain size makes material loss and contamination a serious concern, and thus the authors have designed proprietary,
single-use sieves that can be disposed of between sample runs. This eliminates the chance of cross contamination between samples due to ineffective cleaning. Protocol for the effective handling of this fine material, focusing on minimizing loss and
contamination while maintaining the efficacy of the sieving procedure, have been designed and implemented. The observed grain size distributions
and material loss within the four size fractions chosen for study have given superior results than
those obtained with standard stainless steel laboratory sieves.
The next phase of study (currently ongoing) sees the mounting of each size fraction into epoxy ring mounts, which are subsequently quartered and reassembled into a second mount,
giving a planar surface with both basal and cross sectional surfaces available for SEM analysis. The resulting MLA scans will allow the construction of mineralogical databases for each sample and the characterization of each fraction of
till. |
| Résumé | (Résumé en langage clair et simple, non publié)
Ce résumé rend compte des résultats préliminaires des nouvelles méthodes de traitement des minéraux lourds afin de permettre la caractérisation
des minéraux qui indiquent la fertilité du porphyre Cu et VMS. Cette recherche fait partie du programme TGI 5 de la CGC. |
| GEOSCAN ID | 299862 |
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