all about ore :> Flashcards
smallest commercial mine operations, for instance on veins, are typically of ore
bodies of about
1 Mt,
1 Mt, equivalent to?
cube of rock about 75 m across
the total nickel is in the two largest deposits.
45% o
defined as those in the top 10% of any category with respect to metal contained.
For many commodities this small number of world-class deposits contain between 60 and
90% of global resources,
World-class
Ni about 85%
deleterious elemtns in iron
phosphorous
are extracted from mined and milled ore or waste if the costs of metallurgical
extraction are favourable, but which do not significantly affect the economics of the whole
mining operation
d by-products
give the equilibrium ratios of concentration of the element between any two coexisting phases (two minerals, a mineral and
melt etc.)
partition coefficients (K values),
concentrations in igneous rocks range from
50 ppm in average ultramafic rocks,
through around 100 ppm in mafic rocks to 25 ppm in felsic granites and rhyolites
mined at Tellnes in
Norway as a source of titanium minerals
nelsonites
immiscible
separation of phosphorous-rich melts from carbonatite magmas to form an apatite-rich
igneous rock called
phoscorite at zoned alkaline intrusions
Pegmatites are ores for many so-called rare metals, for instance,
Li, Be, Nb, Ta,
Sn and U
what are the LREEs
La Ce Pr Nd Sm ans Eu
heavy rare earthe
Gd to Lu
rocks located within a few hundred metres of the
contacts of carbonatite intrusions and of zoned intrusions of carbonatite and alkaline
silicate igneous rocks are in almost all cases converted to
metasomatic
rock type characterised by high potassium content, such that one or more of K-feldspar,
riebeckite, and biotite are important minerals
fenite
ore is in weathered carbonatite
and the enrichment to ore grade is a result of lateritic weathering
Mt Weld,
ore is in calcitic and
dolomitic carbonatite with barite as an important gangue mineral
Mountain Pass
ore is present
in calcite carbonatite, but the highest grades are in composite lenses of unique iron oxide–
fluorite–aegerine-augite rock which is hosted within a large (10 by 2 km outcrop area)
carbonatite intrusion
Bayan Obo
temperature dolomite can be a stable mineral in mantle
peridotite
2.5 GPa 90 km
the only ore mineral of Cr
spinel
chromite deposits in large, layered ultramafic–
mafic intrusions;
stratiform
ores in ophiolites or ‘Alpine peridotites’
podiform chromite
ideal complete ophiolite succession is
the ultramafic tectonites are residual upper mantle from which basaltic magmas (e.g. mid-ocean ridge basalt, MORB) have been extracted.
deformed as a result of solid- state flow of the mantle during continuous sea-floor spreading, during which a foliation and lineation is formed as the residue of melting flows upwards to below the ridge axis and then laterally away from the ridge.
tectonites
Magmatic sulfide deposits in mafic and ultramafic rocks provide the majority of the global
supply of
nickel and platinum-group elements (PGEs
PGEs are the six geochemically similar heavy transition-row elements which have
siderophile to chalcophile behaviour All six elements have
very low concentrations (< 10 ppb)
r (Ru, Rh, Pd, Os, Ir and Pt)
also enriched in magmatic sulfide ores and are recovered
at some mines of magmatic sulfide deposits.
Cobalt and gold
Ni–Cu magmatic sulfide deposits in gabbroic intrusions. re disseminated to massive concentrations of sulfide
minerals with up to 80% sulfide minerals, in and adjacent to igneous rock bodies.
base-metal
base-metal, Ni-dominated sulfide deposits in ultramafic lava flows
(komatiites
, PGE magmatic sulfide deposits in large layered ultramafic to mafic
intrusions. disseminated ores in igneous rocks with concentrations of up to at
most only a few percentage sulfide minerals
precious metal
sulfur is required to fully melt
sulfide into the mafic melt derived
200 ppm
expected to have highest concentrations in melts into which
the last sulfide minerals have just melted.
, Cu
concentration of Ni in the melt increases progressively with increasing percentages of
partial melting.
e Ni is partitioned into olivine
emperatures at which ultramafic and mafic magmas crystallise in the crust and
at the Earth’s surface
(1100–1600 C),
The high-temperature Fe–Ni
sulfide mineral is the mineral mss (monosulfide solid solution) . The mineral mss
recrystallises to
pentlandite and pyrrhotite at similarly low temperatures
Chalcopyrite is for instance a product of recrystallisation of the mineral iss (intermediate solid solution) at temperatures of around
300
he ore is the concentration of Ni or Cu in the sulfide fraction of the rock. ranges from a few percentage up to about 20% in these magmatic sulfide ores,
hence rocks with a few percentage or more of sulfides constitute ore.
e tenor
, contain a known resource of about 4000 Mt of rock with disseminated
Cu–Ni sulfide minerals and about 0.2% Ni disseminated over tens of metres of thickness
of the host intrusions.
large Duluth Complex of
Minnesota, USA
small intrusion (~ 3 km2
), but has an
elongate flared shape (canoe shape) above a relatively narrow underlying feeder dyke,
similar to the Great Dyke of Zimbabwe
Mesoproterozoic Jinchuan
There are multiple, closely spaced small ore-hosting gabbro-norite to gabbro intrusions
in the
Noril’sk-Talnakh complex
which contain about 106
km3
of basalts and originally
extended over an area at least 2000 km by 2000 km
Permo-Triassic
Siberian Traps flood basalts
several-kilometre-thick, elliptical bowl-shaped
intrusion about 65 km by 25 km of Palaeoproterozoic age (Figure 2.14). It lacks an
ultramafic cumulate basal sequence, and also lacks the cyclic and rhythmic layering of
the similar-sized Bushveld Complex and Great Dyke intrusions. y layered from a norite (olivine–gabbro) base to a
quartz–diorite top
Sudbury Igneous Complex
y form complex lenticular shapes
sulfide ore bodies
form pods and lenses at the base, or rarely the top,
of the relatively small host intrusions (
contains
clasts of sulfide and of wall-rock in a gabbro-norite matrix.
Breccia ore