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LECTURE 6

Geothermometry, Geobarometry, and Isotope Studies

GEOTHERMOMETRY

- The estimation of temperature conditions at which a geologic material formed. Geothermometers is


commonly based on mineral assemblage and mineral composition information.

FLUID INCLUSION

- Reliable method in measuring:


a.) Temperature of deposition in minerals and
b.) Chemistry of the ore fluids including salinities
- Fluid inclusions are formed as microscopic cavities (<10um-1cm); as crystals grow, trapping some
of the gases and/or liquids from which they crystallize
- Fluids in these inclusions are homogeneous before cooling.
- At room temperature, the fluids may separate as gas and/or fluid and sometimes with “daughter
minerals”- halite, sylvite, hematite, magnetite, anhydrite, chalcopyrite, etc.

3 TYPES OF FLUID INCLUSIONS

1. PRIMARY- inclusions formed in growing crystals, no leakage. It dispersed through a mineral with no
clear relationship to any structure that would permit escape or entry of gas or liquid.
2. SECONDARY- with fracture and sealed again, records conditions of later hydrothermal stage. Formed
after primary crystallization
3. PSEUDOSECONDARY- looks like secondary but may not be if the host crystal was fractured as
the crystal was growing

Methods for temperature determination using fluid inclusions

 Minimum temperature of formation (Filling temperature)- heating increasingly the sampleuntil


a heterogeneous fluid inclusion homogenizes. Pressure correction is applied when needed.
 Total NaCl-equivalent salinity of the fluid- by the freezing point depression method (freezing
the sample and slowly warming until last ice melts. This temperature is then used to read off the
solution composition from a graph) or calculated from equations.
 Eutectic point- the minimum melting point
 Composition of the ore-bearing fluid- inclusion is opened up and direct tests are made on the
liquid by optical-physical properties, SEM, XRF, etc.
 The dissolved salts are primarily chlorides, sulphates, carbonates of Na, K, Mg, Ca.

Five types of fluid according to Nath and Theodore (1971)

1. Liquid with small vapor bubble, no daughter mineral (s)


2. Liquid with large vapor bubble, no daughter mineral (s)
3. Polyphaser inclusions with small vapor bubble
4. Two liquids with vapor and daughter mineral (s)
5. Liquid CO2 with vapor

Other methods of geothermometry

 Synthesis of minerals
✓ The preparation of phase diagram by synthetic melting of hydrothermal studies of pertinent
assemblages is carried out by placing measured amount of elements in controlled atmospheres to
produce quantifiable assemblages of reaction products.
 Determination of melting point
✓ The temperature at which a mineral melt normally at atmospheric pressure, is assumed to mark
the upper limit of stability for that mineral.
 Determination of inversion point and stability ranges
✓ An extension of the determination of melting points is the study of multicomponent systems such
as Cu-Fe-As system
 Determination of exsolution points
✓ High temperature tends to promote disorder in mineral structure
 Study of mineral textures and habits
 Determination of electrical conductivity of minerals
✓ Assuming that minerals formed at higher temperatures have fewer structural defects than those
formed at low temperatures, and that crystallographic imperfections reduce electrical
conductivity, Smith (1947) concluded that the relative electrical properties of conductive minerals
should be a measure of their crystallization temperatures.
 Thermoluminescence
✓ The property of a substance to emit visible light when it is heated; also known as “frozen-in-
phosphorescence”

GEOBAROMETRY

- The estimation of pressure conditions at which a geologic material formed. Geobarometers is


commonly based on mineral assemblage and mineral composition information.

General statements:

✓ Pressure during ore formation is harder to measure than temperature.

✓ Luckily, temperature changes are more significant in ore systems than pressure

4 geobarometers used:

1. Use of P-T regions of silicate oxide used in metamorphic petrology


2. Some specific silicate assemblages offer pressure-data potential. e.g. sericite-phengite in
porphyry systems
3. Cu-Fe-Zn-S geobarometer (Hutchinson & Scott, 1981)
4. Fluid inclusions (Roedder & Bodnar, 1980)

ISOTOPE STUDIES

- The object of these studies has been to determine the sources


& compositions of ore bearing fluids, the sources of the
ore-forming components, the age of mineral deposits, to
help determination of temperature and other conditions of
deposition, and to establish the degrees of bacteriological
involvement in certain ore-forming processes.
1. Stable isotopes
2. Radioisotopes

WIDELY USED ISOTOPES:

1. Oxygen (618O) & Hydrogen (6D) isotopes


✓ able to classify source of water in hydrated alteration minerals,
✓ i.e, magmatic, metamorphic, oceanic, connate, meteoric, etc. Standard use is SMOW (standard
mean ocean water)
2. Sulphur (32S & 34S) isotopes
✓ Pinpoints the source of Sulphur
✓ i.e. magmatic or otherwise. Standard use is troilite (Fes) in Arizona’s Canyon Diablo meteorite
(32/34S=22.22)
3. Carbon isotopes
✓ The importance of carbon and its ions and compounds in the biosphere, lithosphere,
hydrosphere, and atmosphere, relatively little use has been made of stable carbon isotopes in ore
deposit studies.

RADIOISOTOPES

- Radioactivity studies can therefore be used geochemically or to study the geochmeistries of element
separations, that is, source considerations.
 Rubidium-Strontium
- Method of estimating the age of rocks, minerals, and meteorites from measurements of the
amount of the stable isotope strontium-87 formed by the decay of the unstable isotope
rubidium-87 that was present in the rock at the time of its formation.
 Uranium-Thorium-Lead
- Also called common-lead dating
- method of establishing the time of origin of a rock by means of the amount of common lead it
contains
Common lead is any lead from a rock or mineral that contains a large amount of lead and a small
amount of the radioactive progenitors of lead, i.e., the uranium isotopes uranium-235 and
uranium-238 and the thorium isotope thorium-232

The simplest lead isotope studies depend on several assumptions (Richards, 1971):

1. At the time of the formation of the Earth, there was a single set of lead isotope ratios throughout the
Earth’s mass, the so called primitive lead.
2. Since then, all lead has been held in one or more closed systems, the mantle, the crust, and so on,
with proportions of uranium, thorium, and lead changed only by radioactive decay.
3. From time to time “batches” of lead-bearing material have been removed from the source to form
ore deposits, with negligible effect on what was left.
4. Ore lead removed were not contaminated by other leads while traveling to the site of deposition;
they reflect “frozen” original isotope abundances and ratios.

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