Application of mineral norm calculation in the resource evaluation of the sulphide and non-sulphide Zn-Pb mineralisation of the Florida Canyon MVT deposit, Peru

ABSTRACT

Both Zn–Pb hypogene sulphide and Zn supergene non-sulphide mineralisation types occur in the Mississippi Valley-type deposit of Florida Canyon, located in northern Peru. The geometry and spatial relationship between the two ore types are very complex to interpret, when it comes to mineral resource evaluation. An algorithm using the Zn, Pb and S contents is proposed for the calculation of sphalerite, galena and non-sulphide norms in the block model after its conventional ordinary kriging estimation. Model validation was performed by comparing the results of the calculations with available SEM/EDS-MLA data. The results show good correlation between the calculated and the quantitative values, thus accrediting the proposed methodology. The algorithm is simple and fast to use and can be applied to mineral resource evaluation of Zn–Pb MVT deposits associated with non-sulphide mineralisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Mineral norm calculation
• Zn supergene
• MVT deposits
• Florida Canyon
• non-sulphide ore
• resource evaluation
• 3D geological modelling

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Nexa Resources and Solitario Resources for allowing the use of their data. We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments, which surely improved the quality of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Saulo Batista de Oliveira http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2149-1297