Mineralogical Exploration of Grande Cote placer (Senegal)

Since 2013, the society Tizir Limited, Eramet's subsidiary, has been recovering the zircons and the titanium-iron bearing oxides of the Senegal Grande Côte. This placer deposit presents a heterogeneity of mineralogical composition related to the diverse facies of sand and their distribution along the dune system.

The purpose of this first course is to characterise the various horizons of sand mineralogically, athwart the study of drilling profiles to examine the evolution of the concentration in heavy minerals, following their locations and depths, and the specificities of these horizons.

The second subject broached is the impurity issues in the minerals. A study on the origins and the contents of these anomalies with be realised. To address this issue, several analytical methods have been used, such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), paired with the QEMSCAN© analyses.