Ilmenite from the Chavara deposit, India: acritical evaluation

C. RAMAKRISHNAN,R. MANI* AND D. S. SURESHBABUCentre for Earth Science Studies, P.B. No. 7250, Thuruvikkai P.O., Trivandrum-695 031, India

Abstract

The mineralogical status of ilmenite from a prominent modern placer deposit of India is illustrated usingdifferent techniques. Compositional, powder XRD, TGA and SEM analyses prove that consistent lowtemperature alteration took place in Chavara ilmenite leading to the formation of a pseudomtile-hydrated-ilmenite stage. Except for the indication of a geochemical zonation at the southern tip of the deposit, theChavara ilmenite points to a common origin throughout its 22 km stretch along the coast. We advocate a majorsegregation activity by marine factors to the accumulated sediments in the shelf zone in order to originate sucha huge deposit of homogeneous composition.KEVWORDS: ilmenite, weathering/alteration, placer, Chavara, Kerala.

Introduction

THE Chavara beach placers (Kerala state, India) havebeen studied by many authors as they containsignificant quantities of valuable minerals, mainlyilmenite (Tipper, 1914; Gillson, 1959; PrabhakaraRao, 1968). Several workers have also madecharacterization analyses on ilmenites of world-widedeposits to assess the qualitative variation fromdeposit to deposit (Bailey

et al.,

1956; Temple,1966; Wort and Jones, 1980). There are many recentpublications on ilmenite alteration (Frost

et aL,

1983;Hugo and Cornell, 1991 ; Mitra

et al.,

1992). Althoughthe mineralogy, provenance sediment parameters andmicromorphology are reported extensively from theKerala placers (Mallik

et al.,

1987), a detailedcharacterization analysis on ilmenite, which formsthe chief component of the placers (>70%), is lacking.Ilmenite characterization has been carried out for theManavalakurichi placers, another west coast deposit ofIndia, which has a limited fluvial source unlike theChavara placer (Subramanyam

et al.,

1982; SureshBabu

et al.,

1994; Nair

et al.,

1995). Here, thecompositional, mineralogical and surficial changes ofilmenite from Chavara, the single largest deposit of its* Department of Geology, Annamalai University,Annamalai Nagar-608 002, India.kind in the world, are reported to study the degree ofalteration undergone by this mineral.

Background

informationThe study area, Chavara, falls between E longitudes76027'36 ' and 76~ '' and latitudes 9~ '' and8~ '' in the SW fringe of south Indian Precambrianshield. Geographically it lies within the state ofKerala, which is flanked by the Arabian Sea in thewest and Western Ghats in the east. The Chavarabeach placer deposit, consisting of ilmenite,leucoxene, zircon, mtile, monazite, garnet, sillima-nite and kyanite, is spread over an elongated distanceof 22 km, with an average width of 1.5 km in thecoastal zone of Neendakara-Kayamkulam area. Ithas alternating bands of light and heavy minerals upto a depth of about 15 m. These are reported to bederived from the country rocks, viz. khondalites andcharnockites lying in the eastern portion of thedeposit, by the fluvial transportation of at least ninerivers in the area and subsequent differentiation intoblack sand and glass sand deposits (Suresh Babu andThrivikramaji, 1993). At present the enrichment ofheavy minerals is taking place by wave action fromthe sea and modern rivers bringing sedimentstowards this area are discharging into the coastalback waters bordering the eastern side of the placersand thereby not contributing to the deposit zone.

Mineralogical Magazine, April 1997, Vol. 61, pp. 233-242(~ Copyright the Mb~eralogical Society

234 C. RAMAKRISHNAN

ET AL.

Sampling and analytical techniques

Sampling was done along eight traverses, i.e. alongthree longitudinal directions parallel to one another inthe Neendakara-Kayamkulam sector. The samples ofthe first stretch belong to the modern beach (the BSseries); the second and third stretches are from thewestern (WS series) and eastern (ES series) sides ofthe kayal respectively (Fig.l). The subsurfacesamples from the eastern side are represented asESS samples. In total, thirty seven samples have beencollected, of which fourteeen samples were scoopedout from a depth of about 1 metre beneath the groundlevel using an auger hand drill.Ilmenite concentrates were separated with the helpof a Frantz lsodynamic separator followed by wetpanning and sieving of the samples. Pure ilmeniteconcentrate is obtained by hand picking under stereomicroscope. Chemical analysis was carded out bystandard wet chemical methods, aluminium reductionmethod for TiO2 and dichromate titration for iron(Vogel, 1961). AAS was used to detect the amount ofthree trace elements, viz. Mg, Mn and Zn. X-raypowder diffraction (XRD) studies were made using aPhilips diffractometer (Cu-Kct radiation, Ni-filter).The determination of the lattice constants a, c and Vwas done with the help of a LCLSQ programmeusing d values measured from powder XRDreflections. The semiquantitative XRD phaseanalyses for the amounts of ilmenite and pseudo-rutile/rutile/anatase were determined using aPlanimeter. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA)experiments of eight selected samples was carriedout using a Schimadzu TGA 50H at a heating rate of15~ Some samples were mounted usingpolyester cold setting resin for observation in ascanning electron microscope.

Results and discussion

It is apparent that there is a systematic lowering offerrous and total iron contents in ilmenite sampleseastwards from the shore line (i.e. from BS to ES),especially in the case of V-VIII traverses (samplingsections) (Figs. 2 and 3a). The WS set of samplesgenerally occurring between the ES and BS samplesets show intermediate values in the case of ferrousand total iron contents. The subsurface (ESS)samples do not significantly vary with the corre-sponding surface (ES) samples in terms of majorelement content. Compared with this lateral variationin the east-west profile, the major element changes inthe longitudinal direction is minimum. Except for thesouthernmost traverse (I traverse), no significantvariation is noticed in other sample sets in FeO,Fe203 and TiO2 content in the N-S direction. Whileall the samples have values of FeO between 5 and10%, the samples of cross section I containapproximately 20% FeO (Tables 1 and 2).In general the Fe203 contents do not varysignificantly (not more than 2%) whereas FeO andTiO2 show much higher variations (up to 6%) amongthe samples of the individual sections. This clearlyshows the difference in the ferrous-ferric oxidationrates and the iron-removal rates (or the TiO2enhancement rates) due to differential alteration ofBS, WS and ES sample sets. Therefore, it is assumedthat the internal variation in the east-west directionwithin each traverse, as noticed above for FeO andTiO2, is systematic and would not interfere in thecomposition between any northern and southerntraverse. Thus the major element data based oneight traverses prove that the TiO2 value for Chavarailmenite varies between 61.21% and 63.59% exceptfor the first section (57.5%). This disparity in thesouthern end of the deposit is clear in Fig. 3b. Theinsignificant variation between ES and ESS samplesshows that the accumulation seen up to a depth of onemetre belongs to a single phase of deposition. Thus, itcan be seen that the Chavara ilmenite deposit isrelatively homogeneous with respect to its 22 kmlateral expansion and up to a depth of one metre.Further, the parameters FeO/Fe203 (Morad andAldahan, 1986) and Ti/(Ti+Fe) (Frost

et al.,

1983)strongly support the earlier observations regardingthe persistence of material with the composition ofilmenite (Fig. 4). Ilmenite occurs in four stagesdepending on the degree of weathering, namelyferdan ilmenite, hydrated ilmenite, pseudorutile andleucoxene (Frost

et al.,

1983). The pseudorutile is acombination of goethite and rutile as an intergrowthstructure (Grey

et al.,

1983). Leucoxene containsmore than 70% TiO2 and may consist almost entirelyof crypto- or microcrystalline rutile and/or anatase inthe final stages of alteration (Hugo and Cornell,1991). Subsequent to the intermediate stages,ilmenite alters into either rntile (Temple, 1966) oranatase (Anand and Gilkes, 1984) and hematite. Inthis spectrum of ilmenite weathering, the observa-tions show that the samples of the first section belongto the hydrated ilmenite type and the rest of thesamples fall well within the lower limit of thepseudorutite stage in the case of the Chavara deposit.This assesment of all the 37 samples is made on thebasis of Ti/(Ti+Fe) ratio (Table 2). This consistentcompositional behaviour indicates that the modernplacer deposit originated from a pile of alreadyaccumulated sediments and underwent a specificdegree of weathering in total to attain the pseudor-utile stage of ilmenite alteration at Chavara. Theslight but systematic increase in alteration eastwardsfrom the shoreline side can be compared with thesuccessive formation of the placer deposit from theshallow sea. The replenishing activity towards the