Abstract
The Kuqa Basin is an important potentially potash-bearing basin in China, and thick salt-bearing strata were deposited under the influence of multistage Tethyan transgression-regression cycles during the Eocene. At present, research on the process of potash formation in the Kuqa Basin has mostly focused on traditional salt mineralogy, whole-rock geochemistry, and evaporite sedimentary evolution characteristics. However, research on the original ore-forming parent fluid directly related to potash formation has not yet been carried out, directly hindering further evaluation of potash mineralization. Therefore, this paper takes the internal factors controlling potash formation as the starting point and analyzes the physical and chemical properties, such as the homogenization temperatures ( T h ) and chemical compositions, of primary halite fluid inclusions. A total of 220 T h data from fluid inclusions were obtained, and the temperatures ranged from 9.4 to 54.1°C, indicating a high-temperature brine environment conducive to the rapid deposition of the potash deposit. In total, 22 halite fluid inclusions were analyzed for chemical components. The highest KCl content reached 0.59%, which was higher than the lowest industrial grade of potassium-rich brine (0.5%), indicating that the brine experienced a high degree of evaporation and concentration during the salt-forming period and reached the potash precipitation stage. This paper provides quantitative data on the evolution of the sedimentary environment in the Kuqa Basin and supports future potash exploration.
Highlights
Global evaporites were concentrated in the Tethys region during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, and in time and space, a series of evaporites and potash deposits developed sequentially from older in the west to younger in the east [1]
The Kuqa Basin, located on the northern branch of the eastern section of the Tethyan region, developed thick evaporite deposits in the Cenozoic, only some potassium minerals have been discovered to date and potash deposits with industrial mining value have not been found [2,3,4]
The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) was the warmest global climate event in the Cenozoic, and this hightemperature event continued into the early Eocene, when temperatures began to slowly decrease until global warming occurred again in the middle Eocene climate optimum (MECO) [6,7,8,9]
Summary
Global evaporites were concentrated in the Tethys region during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, and in time and space, a series of evaporites and potash deposits developed sequentially from older in the west to younger in the east [1]. Halite fluid inclusions are a good geological archive of brine during the salt-forming period and can provide quantitative and reliable data for studying the temperature, chemical composition, and evolution characteristics of paleobrine associated with potash mineralization. This paper takes the internal factors controlling potash formation as the starting point and comprehensively analyzes the evolution stage of middle Eocene salt-forming brine in the Kuqa Basin by studying the evolution patterns of the temperatures and the chemical compositions of halite fluid inclusions. This paper uses halite fluid inclusions for the first time to quantitatively and directly reconstruct various ion concentrations in the middle Eocene salt-forming brine, which has great significance for potash exploration in the Kuqa Basin
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