Abstract
The Vazante Group is a district in east-central Brazil that consists of a carbonate-dominated marine platform sequence of Late Mesoproterozoic age. The district is home to a north-south belt that contains several zinc mines, but the petrogenesis of the ore body is not yet fully understood. Samples from this district were analyzed using both X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and lithogeochemical assay techniques by Dr. Neil Fernandes in 2016. An analysis was conducted in order to explore the statistical correlations between the XRD and lithogeochemical test results. The purpose of the analysis was to determine whether the raw (uninterpreted) XRD data alone could be used to identify the samples enriched in zinc and other elements indicative of economic mineralization. The results showed very subtle trends that were not significant enough to make conclusions about the possibility of using XRD data without accompanying lithogeochemical data. The higher-than-average correlation of the intensity of pyrite peaks in the XRD data with elements associated with mineralization suggests that there are potentially more robust and significant trends that were not fully uncovered by this analysis, as pyrite has already been associated with mineralized zones. The analysis process itself could be valuable in future projects, and future work on this technique is proposed that uses machine learning to cluster the data and detect trends that may not be obvious using conventional techniques.
Published Version
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