Geochemistry of the Huangshandong Ni-Cu deposit in northwestern China: Implications for the formation of magmatic sulfide mineralization in orogenic belts----Institute of Geochemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Huangshandong Ni-Cu sulfide deposit is located at the southern margin of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB) in north Xinjiang, NW China. The deposit contains similar to 135 Mt of sulfide ores grading 027 wt% Cu, 0.52 wt.% Ni. The deposit is hosted by an Early Permian mafic-ultramafic complex predominantly comprising diorite, hornblende gabbro, olivine gabbro, gabbronorite, lherzolite, sulfide-bearing lherzolite and ilmenite-bearing hornblende gabbro at the base of the intrusion. These rocks exhibit enrichment of large ion lithophile elements and depleted high field strength elements relative to N-MORB, and high Th/Yb ratios, indicating that the primary magma of the Huangshandong intrusion was derived from partial melting of a metasomatized mantle source, modified by subducted slab-derived melt/fluid. Intrusive relations and geochemical signatures confirm that four pulses of magma were involved in the formation of the Huangshandong intrusion. The low Se/S ratios of the sulfide ores (63.1-166 x 10(-6)) and field observations suggest that contamination by crustal S and graphite was the key trigger mechanism for sulfide saturation. The IPGE contents in the Huangshandong rocks and sulfide ores range from 025 to 99.1 ppb, lower than those of PGE-undepleted Ni-Cu sulfide deposits. High Cu/Pd ratios (>1.5 x 10(6)) and low Pd content (9-151 ppb) indicate that the Huangshandong sulfides segregated from PGE-depleted magma produced by early sulfide removal at depth. Model calculations indicate that the sparsely disseminated sulfide ores in the Huangshandong deposit were produced by crystallization of the sulfide liquid. The low Pd/It and high Ni/Ir ratios suggest that the densely disseminated sulfides segregated from the PGEdepleted magma at lower R factor values and accumulated more MSS compared to the sparsely disseminated sulfides. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Publication name

ORE GEOLOGY REVIEWS Volume: 56 Pages: 181-198 Special Issue: SI Published: JAN 2014

Author(s)

Deng, Yu-Feng; Song, Xie-Yan; Chen, Lie-Meng; Zhou, Taofa; Pirajno, Franco; Yuan, Feng; Xie, Wei; Zhang, Dayu

Corresponding author　

SONG Xieyan
songxieyan@vip.gyig.ac.cn
Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Geochem, State Key Lab Ore Deposit Geochem, Guiyang 550002, Peoples R China.

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