STUDY, EVALUATION AND RESERVES ASSESSMENT OF TITANOMAGNITITE ORE, GABAL WADHAIT AREA, SOUTH EASTERN DESERT, EGYPT

 El-BARAGAH, M.H, 

Emra

 Gabal Wadhait area is situated in the southeastern part of the Eastern Desert of Egypt, between lat. 22ْ 30َ 00ً - 22ْ 37َ 00ً N and long. 34ْ 58َ 00ً - 35ْ 05َ 00ً E, and covering an area of about 150 Km2. The area is made up mainly of mafic-ultramafic rocks, and layered gabbros hosting massive and disseminated titanomagnetite ore bands.

Detailed topographic contour map, Scale 1: 5000, covered an area of about 10 Km2 was prepared, eight  trenches were excavated  perpendicular to the exposures of ore bands and country rocks with a total lengths of 350 m, and forty one channel samples were collected from the trenches, (22 disseminated, 12 massive and 7 of country rocks). IN addition, thirty panel samples were collected from fifteen pits to represent weathered products derived from Gabal Wadhait mafic ultramafic intrusion and its associated titanomagnetite ore, the dominant rocks of the study area.

Technical experiments were carried out on the total reserves of the studied area as a pilot project for exploitation.

The ore was divided into three categories with total reserves of 16.078 million tons yields 6.6239 Mt. heavy minerals when subjected to crushing and grinding the rock ore to size 0.5mm then concentrating by spiral and shaking table and then subjecting to dry magnetic separation. This would yield 4.1557Mt Magnetite, 0.5786Mt Ilmenite, 0.4957Mt Hematite & Goethite, 0.1986Mt Sphene, 0.0340Mt Mica, and 0.6266 Mt Heavy Silicate in addition to 0.5367 Mt of the Light fraction. The Heavy mineral concentration carried out on the size fraction         (-1mm) which constitutes about 38% of the stream sediments yielded 0.034 Mt from a total reserves of 1.42 Mt. The heavy minerals content included 0.003 Mt. Magnetite, 0.019 Mt Ilmenite, 0.001 Mt Hematite & Goethite, 0.002 Mt. Sphene, 0.004Mt, Heavy Silicates and 0.003 Mt. of the light fraction.