Research paper
A drainage sediment geochemical orientation study at Boddington, Western Australia

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Abstract

The Boddington Au deposit in the south-west of Western Australia is a relatively recent discovery in an area where no previous mining had taken place. A drainage sediment orientation survey was completed prior to any development of the deposit to evaluate the application of surface geochemical techniques for Au mineralisation in a non-contaminated environment. The survey compared four sieve fractions, panned concentrates and bulk cyanide leach samples. The position of the deposit is clearly identified by the abundances of Au, As and Ag in the media examined. The variations of Cu, Fe, Ni and Sn cannot be related to the known mineralisation, but display consistently high abundances where the drainage crosses the greenstone belt. The evidence from this survey suggests that Au in both bulk cyanide leach samples and the minus 200 mesh fraction, plus As in all sieve fractions and concentrates, provide the optimum criteria for recognising Boddington-type mineralisation using drainage sediment geochemistry in this district.

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Cited by (12)

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    In the laboratory, the samples for BLEG (-16 mesh) analysis were leached in 2 L of cyanide solution in a bottle roller, tumbler, with 0.1–0.3 % cyanide and either lime or sodium hydroxide, and rolled for 12 h (Yilmaz et al., 2015). The efficiency of the leaching was dependent on cyanide concentration as well as pH, oxygen being available, duration of agitation, particle size, availability of gold, and the absence of competing precipitants for gold, for example, organic matter and sulfides (cf. Mazzucchelli, 1990; Beeson, 1995). The metals, after leaching, were precipitated on zinc powder.

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    Both BLEG and −80# (<180 μm) regional stream sediment surveys led to the discovery of a number of epithermal or porphyry-style Au-Ag-Cu deposits in Western Turkey from the late 1980s onwards (Eurogold, 1996; Colakoglu, 2000; Oyman et al., 2003; Yilmaz, 2003b, 2007; Yigit, 2009; Yilmaz et al., 2010, 2013). In sediments where the Au is fine grained and free, previous studies have indicated similar spatial geochemical patterns between BLEG and either aqua regia or total Au contents of the fine fractions (Ledic and Itard, 2003; Simmonds et al., 2015), but where Au is coarse-grained, bound up in other mineral phases or associated with organics (Cohen et al., 2005) or where the efficiency of the BLEG leach is affected by sample composition or variation in the digestion method itself (Mazzuchelli, 1990; Beeson, 1995) the patterns may differ significantly. This study makes use of the extensive geochemical databases for Western Turkey to examine the relative efficiency of the more costly BLEG over the conventional −80# stream sediment fraction in a region with a range of lithologies and deposit types, and extends the orientation work conducted around the Cemalcavus Au-Ag deposit by Yilmaz et al. (2015).

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    In the laboratory, samples for BLEG (− 16 mesh) analyses were leached in 2 l of cyanide solution in a bottle roller, tumbler, with 0.1–0.3% cyanide and either lime or sodium hydroxide, and rolled for 12 h (Yilmaz, 2003). The efficiency for extraction was dependent on cyanide concentration as well as pH, oxygen being available, duration of agitation, particle size, availability of gold and the absence of competing precipitants for gold, for example, organic matter, sulfides, etc. (cf. Beeson, 1995; Mazzucchelli, 1990). The metals, which were leached in 2 l of cyanide solution, were precipitated on zinc powder.

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