Thunderbirds are go! Sheffield Resources WA zircon deposit.

• Autores: Andrew Scogings, David Boyd, Mark Teakle
• Localización: Industrial Minerals, ISSN 0019-8544, Nº. 565, 2014 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Octubre)
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The Thunderbird deposit is located on the Dampier Peninsula about 60km west of Derby, and 25km north of the sealed Great Northern highway joining Derby and Broome ( Figure 1 ). As noted in March 2014 by [Bruce Mcquitty], "The Thunderbird deposit is one of the largest accumulations of zircon in the world. The contained zircon of the total resource stands at 14.3m tonnes. The deposit also contains a globally significant quantity of ilmenite. The key to the deposit is the extensive high grade zone which features exceptionally high in-situ grades of 0.92% zircon and 3.4% ilmenite ( Table 1 ). Furthermore, the mineralisation at Thunderbird remains open in all directions ( Figure 6 ). Sheffield's next drilling campaign will target extensions to the deposit." Thunderbird has total mineral resources (measured, indicated and inferred) of 2.62bn tonnes at 6.5% heavy minerals (HM) for 170m tonnes of contained HM, including a high grade component of 740 m tonnes at 12.1% HM with 0.92% zircon and 3.4% ilmenite grades ( Table 1 ). At a 3% HM cut-off, the HM assemblage of the resource is 8.4% zircon, 2.8% high-titanium (HiTi) leucoxene, 3.0% leucoxene and 28% ilmenite for a total valuable heavy mineral (VHM) component of 42%. Process testwork has shown that the VHM can be recovered using standard mineral sands processing techniques and that Thunderbird will generate high quality marketable products.

    Thunderbird has an estimated total mineral resource of 2.62bn tonnes at 6.5% HM (measured, indicated and inferred, at 3% HM cut-off), containing 14.3m tonnes of zircon, 47.9m tonnes of ilmenite, 5.2m tonnes of leucoxene and 4.7m tonnes of HiTi leucoxene. The resource has a coherent higher grade component of 740m tonnes at 12.1% HM (measured, indicated and inferred, at 7.5% HM cut-off) containing 6.8m tonnes of zircon, 2.1m tonnes of HiTi leucoxene, 1.9m tonnes of leucoxene and 25m tonnes of ilmenite. As noted by McQuitty at Diggers & Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie this year, the Thunderbird deposit is a Tier one project, amongst the world's largest and highest grade deposits"