• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.375-387
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• 2017

Amphibolite-hosted Fe-Ti mineralization at the Soyeonpyeong Island, located in central western part of the Korean Peninsula is a typical orthomagmatic Fe-Ti oxide deposit in South Korea. The amphibolite intruded into NW-SE trending Precambrian metasedimentary rocks. Lower amphibolite is characterized by igneous layering, consisting of feldspar-dominant and amphibole-Fe-Ti oxide-dominant layers. The igneous layering shows complicated and/or sharp contact. In contrast, upper amphibolite has a more complicated lithofacies (garnet-bearing, coarser, and schistose), and massive Fe-Ti oxide ore alternates with schistose amphibolite. NS- and EW-trending fault systems lead to redistribute upper amphibolite-hosted Fe-Ti orebody and igneous layering of lower amphibolite, respectively. The whole-rock compositions of amphibolite and Fe-Ti oxide ore reflect their constituent minerals. Amphibolite shows significantly positive Eu anomalies whereas Fe-Ti oxide ore has weak negative Eu anomalies. Plagioclase (Andesine to oligoclase) and Fe-Ti oxide minerals have constant composition regardless of their distribution. Amphibole has a compositionally variable but it doesn't reflect the chemical evolution. Mineral compositions within individual layers and successive layers are relatively constant not showing any stratigraphic evolution. This suggests that there are no successive injections of Fe-rich magma or assimilation with Fe-rich country rocks. Contrasting Eu anomalies between amphibolite and Fe-Ti oxide ore also suggest that extensive plagioclase fractionation during early crystallization stage cause increase in $Fe_2O_3/FeO$ ratio and overall Fe contents in the residual magma. Thus, Fe-rich residual liquids may migrate at the upper amphibolite by filter pressing mechanism and then produce sheeted massive Fe-Ti mineralization during late fractional crystallization.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.77-95
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• 2022

The Gonamsan gabbroic complex in the Pocheon area, northwestern region of South Korea consists of a variety types of gabbroic rocks and associated Fe-Ti oxide deposits caused by magmatic differentiation. Post-magmatic intrusions (i.e., gabbroic pegmatite and pyroxene-apatite-zircon rocks) partly intruded into the gabbroic rocks. The gabbroic pegmatite occurs in monzodiorite and oxide gabbro of the complex, intimately and spatially associated with high-grade lenticular Fe-Ti oxide mineralization. The pegmatite can be subdivided into plagioclase-amphibole and pyroxene-olivine pegmatite, in which the contact surface is sharp. The plagioclase-amphibole pegmatite comprises plagioclase and amphibole, with lesser amount of pyroxene, ilmenite, sphene, apatite, and biotite. The pegmatite shows plagioclase-amphibole intergranular texture, in which the open space formed by large plagioclase laths (An_2-26Ab_72-98Or_0-2) are infilled by amphibole. The pyroxene-olivine pegmatite is dark gray to black in color and also contains magnetite, ilmenite, spinel, apatite, and calcite as a minor component. The pyroxene (En_35-36Fs_8-9Wo₅₅) and olivine (Fo_84-85Fa_15-16) partly show a poikilitic texture defined by smaller euhedral olivine enclosed by coarser clinopyroxene. Fe-Ti oxide minerals consist mainly of magnetite and ilmenite that are found interstitially to earlier formed silicates. Subsequently, they are encompassed by reaction rim (almost of amphibole and biotite) along the boundary with surrounding silicate minerals. Under the microscope, magnetite contains a lot of oxyexsolved ilmenite (trellis type) and spinel, and thereby is weakly enriched in magnetite-compatible elements such as Ti, Al, Mg, and V. The structure and textures at the contact zone as well as mineralogical disequilibrium between gabbroic pegmatite and the host gabbroic rocks suggest that the pegmatite may form as a result of accumulation from Fe-rich melt (or liquid) that occurred somewhere rather than in situ form from the host gabbroic rock during the magmatic differentiation. Consequently, the preliminary study suggests that further study on the post-magmatic activities can not only help us improve our understanding on magmatic fractionation but also provide critical information on Fe-Ti oxide mineralization in gabbroic rocks resulting from the magmatic differentiation.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.89-98
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• 1978

Mineralogy, beneficiation, and processes of titanium ores are reviewed from petrographic viewpoints. The most important titanium minerals are ilmenite ($FeTiO_3$) and rutile ($TiO_2$). Ilmenite will play major role :for raw material, because rutile are rapidly diminishing. Thus, there is a need to develope a successful process for producing high grade Ti02 from ilmenite. Commercial, as well as R and D processes to treat more abundant ilmenite ores fall in three general classess: 1. Iron in ilmenite is partially or completely reduced and separated either physically or chemically. 2. Iron is reduced to ferrous state and chemically leached away from the titanium. 3. Ore is treated to make chlorides either selectively or with subsequent separation and purification of $TiC_4$. Routes and efficiencies of these process technologies are primarily influenced by the particular ore deposit to be mined and secondly by environmental considerations. One deposit parameters which influence ilmenite process technologies are: 1. Complexity of microtextures of ilmenite intergrown with Fe-oxide minerals. 2. Composition of concentrates; ilmenites contain minor amounts of substituted Mg, Mn, and V. These elements plus iron and gangue minerals can cause difficulties to complete reactions, substantial acid consumption, difficulties of removing waste solids, and waste disposal problems. Major contributions to be made by petrologists for process optimization are: characterization and interpretation of compositional and physical changes of raw materials and solids derived from process streams. These informations can play significant role in selecting and improving process steps for titania production.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.17-22
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• 2004

It has been carried our for establishing the methodology to upgrade $TiO_2$ by carbothermal reduction of iron oxide in ilmenite. Based on present experimental results, the possibility for substitution with rutile has been investigated. It could by proposed that the 2 wt.% $FeCl_3$ of sample and carbon of 2 equivalents are optimum conditions as a feeding materials. And also appropriate reducing temperature and reduction time were about $1100^{\circ}C$ and 30 minutes. The product obtained by the processes of carbon reduction and magnetic separation may be used the substitute mineral of rutile.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.85-95
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• 1987

The host rocks of titaniferous magnetite deposits in Gonamsan are alkaline gabbros, which are typical of undersaturated alkaline rocks in terms of the lack of normative quartz. According to field occurrences and petrographic features, these alkaline gabbros are divided into 3 rock types: coarse-grained and pegmatitic rock, medium-grained rock with equigranular texture, and layered cumulate rock. All these rocks mainly contain clinopyroxene(salite), plagioclase(An 43-66), pargasite, and ilmenite. The accessory minerals are apatite, sphene, quartz, and sometimes titaniferous magnetite. Pargasite, sphene, and quartz are considered to be secondary minerals formed by the reaction among clinopyroxene, plagioclase and Fe-Ti oxide at deuteric stage. Fe-Ti oxides generally occur as ilmenite in the alkaline rocks, and titaniferous magnetite in the ore deposits. Layered cumulate rocks are characterized by a recurrence of discontinuous thin mesolayer of clinopyroxene-pargasite within leucolayer mainly composed of plagioclase. Clinopyroxene is cumulus mineral whereas plagioclase, ilmenite and apatite occur as intercumulus minerals. According to the variation diagrams of oxide and trace element contents against the differentiation index, incompatible elements, such as Na, Ba and Sr, show positive correlations whereas compatible elements, such as Mg and Cr, show negative correlations. However some compatible elements, such as Co, Ni and V show irregular variations, reflecting relative cumulate status of cumulus and intercumulus minerals. On the de la Roche multicationic diagram, these alkaline gabbros are distributed along the differentiation curve of undersaturated alkaline series from alkaline basaltic composition through basanitic composition to tephritic composition. Layered cumulate rocks, which are distributed between basanitic composition and tephritic composition, reflect their cumulate character, slightly scattering away from the curve. The medium-grained rock shows higher contents in Ba, Sr and light rare earch elements than the coarse-grained and pegmatitic rock. The former shows two times higher contents of total rare earth elements than the latter, $while(La/Lu)_{cn}$ ratios maintain fairly constant values of 5.08~5.06 in these two rocks. This means that coarse-grained and pegmatitic rock, as compared with the medium-grained rock, was formed by the earlier differentiated magma but rare-earth element distribution pattern remained almost parallel during differentiation. From the data the above mentioned, these alkaline gabbros are considered to be comagmatic and to be formed by intrusions of differentiated magmas in its reservoir.

• The Journal of the Petrological Society of Korea
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 1994

We present petrography, mode and chemistry data for Fe-Ti oxide minerals from the Mesozoic granitoids in South Korea. Magnetites from the Daebo Uurassic) granites are nearly pure $Fe_3O_4$, while those from the Bulgugsa (Cretaceous) granites contain considerable amounts of Mn and Ti. This is probably related to rapid cooling of the Bulgugsa granites compared with slow cooling of Daebo granites, which is supported by geologic relations and hornblende geobarometry results of Cho and Kwon (1994) on the emplacement depth for these granites. The composition of ilmenite does not shew appreciable difference between the Daebo and Bulgugsa granites. However, $Fe_2O_3$ contents are higher for the ilmenites coexisting with magnetite than for those without magnetite. In the temperature vs. oxygen fugacity diagram, the Bulgugsa granites plot near Ni-NiO and QFM buffer curves, although only two samples show greater than the granite solidus temperature. The mode data suggest that both magnetite- and ilmenite-series exist in Daebo and Bulgusa granites from the Kyonggi massif, Ogcheon belt and Youngnam massif, while only magnetite-series exists in Bulgugsa granites from the Kyongsang basin. Many ilmenite-series granites occur in the Ogcheon belt, which might be related to assimilation of carboniferous sediments in the belt. The proportion (44 : 56) between ilmenite- and magnetite-series for the Daebo granites is significantly different from that of Ishihara et al. (1981) who showed, using magnetic susceptibility data, predominance of ilmenite-series (more than 70%) for the Daebo granites, which can be mainly attributed to preference in sampling and to wrong assignment of age for some plutons. We also found magnetite in weakly-magnetized Kanghwa granite which was formerly classified as ilmenite-series by Ishihara et al. (1981). The proportion of ilmenite-series increases in the order of hornblende biotite granite, biotite granite and two mica granite. We conclude from these observations that the ilmeniteseries granites might have originated from contamination of carboniferous crustal material and/or such source material.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.259-264
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• 2006

The separation and purification of $TaCl_5$is indispensable in the synthetic process of $TaCl_5$by chlorination of tantalum oxide. The reaction products are mainly $TaCl_5$, $NbCl_5$, $TiCl_4$ and $FeCl_2$. However, we need to separate $TaCl_5/NbCl_5$ mixture from the reaction product, because $TaCl_5$ and $NbCl_5$ are easily separated each other by distillation or hydrogen reduction process. In this work, a comparison study was carried out between direct sequence and indirect sequence to obtain $TaCl_5/NbCl_5$ mixture from the reaction product by removing light component, $TiCl_4$ and heavy component, $FeCl_2$ using two distillation columns. It was concluded that the direct sequence gave better results than indirect sequence in the aspect of initial capital costs and the associative operating costs.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.643-659
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• 2012

The Chungju Fe-REE deposit is located in the Kyemyeongsan Formation of the Ogcheon Group. The Kyemyeongsan Formation includes meta-volcanic rocks and pegmatite hosted REE deposit which show different kind of REE-containing minerals. The meta-volcanic rocks hosted REE deposits' main REE minerals are allanite, zircon, apatite, and sphene, whereas the pegmatite hosted REE deposits is mainly composed of fergusonite, and karnasurtite, zircon, thorite. The meta-volcanic rock hosted major REE mineral is allanite as the form of aggregation and contains 23.89-29.19 wt% TREO (Total Rare Earth Oxide), 4.71-9.92 wt% $La_2O_3$, 11.30-14.33 wt% $Ce_2O_3$, 0.11-0.29 wt% $Y_2O_3$, 0.15-0.94 wt% $ThO_2$, as a formula of (Ca, Y, REE, Th)$_{2.095}$(Mg, Al, Ti, Mn, $Fe^{3+})_{2.770}(SiO_4)_{2.975}(OH)$. Accompanying REE in a coupled substitution for $Ca^{2+}$ (M1 site) and $Al^{3+}-Fe^{2+}$ (M2 site) leads to a large chemical variety. Due to the allanite's high contents of Fe, it belongs to Ferrialanite. The pegmatite hosted deposit's domi-nant REE mineral is fergusonite as prismatic or subhedral grains associated with zircon, fluorite and karnasurtite. Geochemical composition of the fergusonite($YNbO_4$) suggests substitution of Y-REE and Y-Th in A-site, and Nb-Ta-Ti in B-site, furthermore the proportion of $Y_2O_3$ and $Nb_2O_5$ is oddly 1:1.5 comparing to the ideal ratio 1:1 and Nb is higher than Y, also A-site Y actively substitutes with REE. Karnasurtite in pegmatite variously ranges 9.16-22.88 wt% $Ce_2O_3$, 2.15-9.16 wt% and $La_2O_3$, 0.44-10.8 wt% $ThO_2$, as a calculated formula (Y, REE, Th, K, Na, Ca)$_{1.478}(Ti, Nb)_{1.304}$(Mg, Al, Mn, $Fe^{3+})_{0.988}$(Si, P)$_{1.431}O_7(OH)_4{\cdot}3H_2O$. Firstly the 870-860 Ma is the initial age of the supercontinent Rhodinia dispersal and subsequent A-1 type volcanism, which contains Fe, REE, and HFS(High Field Strength elements; Nb, Zr, Y etc.) elements in Fe-rich meta-volcanic rocks dominant Kyemyeongsan Formation, might mineralized allanite. Another synthesis is that regional metamorphism at late Paleozoic 300-280 Ma(Cho et al., 2002) might cause allanite mineralization. Also pegmatite REE mineralization highly related to the granite intrusion over the Chungju area in Jurassic(190 Ma; Koh et al., 2012). Otherwise above all, A-1 type volcanism at the same time of the Kyemyeongsan Formation development, regional metamorphism and pegmatite, might have caused REE mineralization. Although REE ore bodies display a close spatial association, each ore bodies display temporal distinction, different mineral assemblage and environment of ore formation.

• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.239-254
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• 2016

The Hwangto cave is a sea cave which is located near shore in the Taeha-ri, Ulleung Island, being composed of the reddish tuff wall rock, the topic of this study, and the trachyte ceiling rock. The chemical compositions of the red tuff layer are 49.81-63.63% of $SiO_2$, 13.05-24.91% of $Al_2O_3$, 2.67-5.82% of $Fe_2O_3$, 2.87-6.92% of $Na_2O$, 2.37-3.85% of $K_2O$, 0.55-0.81% of $TiO_2$, 0-0.53% of MnO, 0.39-1.75% of MgO, and 0.60-1.40% of CaO with a pH ranging from 4.5 to 8. The reddish tuff are composed of 23.7-39.4% of anorthoclase, 16.9-33.3% of sanidine, 15.8-26.1% of illite, 5.1-9.0% of hematite, 0-3.7% of goethite, 6.9-9.9% of titanium oxide, and 0.9-9.5% of halite in mineral composition. Although it only includes anorthoclase, sanidine, and illite as major minerals, there can be additional vitric minerals that could not detected by the XRD. The mineralogy and textures of the tuff layer indicate that it became reddish due to the formation of amorphous palagonite and the oxidation of the iron as a heat from the trachytic lava affects the underlying tuff to altered. This iron oxides are enriched in the palagonite, or form microcrystalline or amorphous minerals. We thus suggest that the red tuff layer was generated by the combination of the thermal oxidation involved in the trachytic lava flow on the tuff layer, the palagonitization of the matrix of the tuff, and the oxidation of iron-bearing minerals.

• Proceedings of the Mineralogical Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.67-67
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• 2003

The chemical compositions and textural relationships of the Nb-Zr oxide minerals including pyrochlore [ideally (Ca,Na)$_2$Nb$_2$O$\sub$6/(OH,F), with up to 24% UO$_2$ and 16% Ta$_2$O$\sub$5/] and baddeleyite [ideally ZrO$_2$, with up to 6% Nb$_2$O$\sub$5/] in the Sokli carbonatite complex, Kola Peninsula, Arctic are described. These two minerals in carbonatites are the major hosts for the HFSEs such as U, Th, Ta, Nb, Zr and Hf and thus are interest both economically and petrologically. The Sokli carbonatite complex (360-370 Ma) in Northern Finland, which forms a part of the Paleozoic Kola Alkaline Province (KAP), is mainly composed of multi-stages of carbonatite and phoscorite associations (P1-C1 P2-C2, P3-C3, D4 and D5) surrounded by altered ultramafic rocks (olivinite and pyroxenite) and cut by numerous small dikes of ultramafic lamprophyre. The Sokli complex contains the highest concentration in niobium and probably in tantalum, which are economically very important to modern steel technology, among the ultramafic-alkaline complexes of the KAP. Pyrochlore and baddeleyite mostly concentrate in the phoscorites. Pyrochlores in the Sokli complex are generally rounded octahedra and cubes in shape, red brown to grey yellow in color, and 0.2 to 5 mm in size. They are found in all calcite carbonatites, phoscorites and dolomite carbonatites, except P1-C1 rocks. These pyrochlores display remarkable zonations which depend on host rock compositions, and have significant compositional variations with evolution of the Sokli complex. The common variation scheme is that (1) early pyrochlore is highly enriched in U and Ta; (2) these elements decrease abruptly in the intermediate stage, while Th and Ce increase, and (3) late stage pyrochlore is low in U, Ta, Th, and Ce, and correspondingly high in Nb. Baddeleyites in the Sokli complex occur in the early P1-C1 and P2-C2 rocks and rarely in P3. They crystallized earlier than pyrochlores, and occasionally show post-magmatic corrosion and replacement. The FeO and TiO$_2$ contents of baddeleyites are much lower than those of the other terrestrial and lunar baddeleyites, whereas Nb$_2$O$\sub$5/ and Ta$_2$O$\sub$5/ contents are the highest among the reported compositions. Ta/Nb and Zr/Nb ratios of pyrochlores and baddeleyites decrease towards later stage facies, which is in accordance with the whole rock compositions. The variation of Ta/Nb and Zr/Nb ratios of pyrochlores and baddeleyites is considered to be a good indicator to trace an evolution of the carbonatite complexes.