Prospection Alluvionnaire des minéraux lourds dans le secteur de Oued Amizour, Nord Algérie.

Abstract

The magmatic complex of Oued Amizour is located at the limit of the formations which belong to the internal and external domain of the Maghrebid chain, it is a volcano-sedimentary complex which groups together volcanic rocks in the center, delimited by seven plutons to the North, to the east and south and by the Mio-Plio-Quaternary of the Soummam valley to the west.The climatological, geomorphological and petrographic conditions are all met in favor of a robable concentration of heavy minerals in the alluviums of Oued Amizour. The purpose of this brief is to recognize these minerals and see if they contain economically valuable minerals such as gold and silver. To do this, we carried out an alluvial prospecting in the said region, the samples collected underwent washing and physicochemical treatments, according to the Parfenoff protocol, to remove organic debris and carbonates and obtain a representative concentrate of size included between 63μ 500μ, to perform a particle size analysis. The concentrate underwent magnetic separation by a magnet to extract the ferromagnetic minerals and densimetric separation by Bromoform, with a specific gravity of 2.89, to obtain a light fraction and a dense fraction. The mineralogical recognition of heavy fractions with a binocular magnifying glass of these alluviums highlighted the presence of these minerals: Galena, Sphalerite, Pyrite, halcopyrite, Pyrrhotite, Marcassite, Molybdenite, Diopside, Apatite, Zircon, Hematite, Magnetite, Martite , Goethite and Silver