Mercury as a useful pathfinder for the Chinkuashih enargite-gold deposits,Taiwan |
| |
| Institution: | 1. Key Laboratory of Submarine Geosciences, State Oceanic Administration, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China;2. State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China;3. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Oceanography, Shanghai 200240, China;4. State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, China University of Geoscience, Wuhan 430074, China |
| |
| Abstract: | The Chinkuashih is a group of dacite-related hydrothermal enargite-gold deposits of the Quaternary age, which produced 94 tons of gold and 119,101 tons of copper from 1895 to 1987. It has remaining reserves of 656 tons of gold with an average grade range of 1.5–3.5 g/ton of Au for all orebodies discovered.Mercury content in different media such as stream sediments, heavy minerals in stream sediments, soils, rocks/ores, and pyrite samples was analyzed by a gold–film mercury detector to evaluate whether mercury is a good pathfinder for these types of deposits at Chinkuashih. The gold film technique is more rapid and cheaper than the traditional fire assay or fire assay/ICP-MS gold and trace element analyses.Mercury in stream sediments and soils indicated the border zone of gold mineralization 12 km away from the center of mineralization at Chinkuashih. Mercury in heavy minerals of the stream sediments distinguished the intermediate zone with gold veins and gold/gold–copper breccia pipes from the core or inner zone with the gold–copper zone. It has been found that contours of 1000 or 500 ppb Hg of soil samples can delineate the outcropping gold orebodies. The gold ores generally contain 1000 ppb or more Hg. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
