Quantifying analysis of detrital porphyry indicator minerals to guide exploration and decision-making

This project will accelerate heavy mineral separation and analysis and remove the need to involve toxic heavy liquids in the mineral separation procedure. It will accelerate data production by developing new analytical procedures. It will also develop new ways of correlating the composition of detrital minerals to the presence of ore bodies in stream catchments. Hence it will provide a way of rapidly assessing a large region for ore fertility. Finally, it will enhance our understanding of the geochemical signature of ore fertility and our ability to discriminate it from other tectonic signals in a catchment. Interns will will spend time at partners’ offices and be involved in knowledge and technology transfer. They will spend time at the University of British Columbia generating key supporting data sets in the UBC laboratories. The partner organizations will benefit from accelerated mineral separation and analysis procedures and an improved understanding of key porphyry indicator minerals and software tools to analyze detrital data sets. They will be able to use this information to more easily target new mineral deposits.

Faculty Supervisor:

Joel Saylor

Student:

Partner:

BHP Minerals Canada Ltd;Teck Resources Ltd

Discipline:

Earth science

Sector:

Manufacturing; Mining

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: