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Abstract The naphthides are considred as promising sources of extraction of various metals: V, Mo, U, etc. The idea emphasized in this paper is completing this list with the gold. The authors had a chance to study this problem when making a geological map and searching for the gold ores and placers for the Yagodnoye Geological Survey Department, in the Magadan region, North-Eeast Siberia. Here, high absorption abilities of petroleum with respect to gold was used in laboratory analyses. Later on, the research was continued at a natural object: the Talin Oil Field in the Middle Ob area, West Siberia. Here, the rocks of the oil collector are represented by the alluvial quartz sands and the gravelites of the Sherkalin horizon (J1) of the Tyumen set (J1+2). Accumulation material of the horizon oil deposits is the upper paleosoic rocks of the Ural-Siberian folded region. In the other similar deposits, significant industrial ore bodies and placers of gold are known. Hence, it was natural to assume a gold presence in the ancient alluvium of the Sherkalin horizon due to a buried gold placer. The testing verified these assumptions. In all three samples taken from this oil field, the atomic-absorptional method showed concentrations of gold much higher than 1 g/t. This is quite comparable to the average industrial gold concentrations, which are 4 to 10 g/t for ore mines, and 0.2 to 1 g/t for placers.
Introduction Following a tradition, petroleum is used as a power source. However, it was in the end of the XIX century that in the ash of petroleum it was found a presence of small concentrations of metals, e.g., V and Ni (0.02 to 0.04%). By now, the number of such metals, commonly called as "micro-elements", is no less than 50. In today realities of frustration of the natural mineral deposits, petroleum can be considered as a non-traditional source of various metals.
Analysis of the published materials reveals that all the deposits of petroleum and bitumens are enriched with V, Ni, Re, Mo, Se, U, Sb, As, AU, Cd, Zn, Ag. The concentrations of the latter in ten and more times exceed their clarkes and reach the levels of industrial ore concentrations. Their concentration coefficients, i.e., the ratios of the element concentration in naftides to its clarke in the earth core, sometimes reach the following levels: 75-1000 (Re), 2.5-9.1 (Mo), 1.5-20 (Sb), 2-12 (Cd), 2-10 (As), 12-200 (Au). In the USA, Canada and Venesuela, V, Ni, and U are industrially produced from heavy oils and bitumens. The estimations2 show that only in the bitumen deposits of the Canadian asphalt belt (Atabaska, Ins-River, etc.), the reserves of V are around 36 millon tones, and of Ni it is around 17 million tones. Here, we recall that the overall prognostic estimation of the global reserves of V (without the Former Soviet Union) are around 56 million tones.
According to the data of the Russian researchers, the reserves of V in the petroleum of only two deposits of the Timano-Pechora petroleum-gas province (PGP): the Usinskoye and the Yarechegskoye, are considerably greater than the ore deposits of this area that are already exploited. Calculations show that extracting the metals from only 10% of all petroleum produced in Russia could cover major national needs in such metals as V, Ni, Re, Ga, Ge, Hg, Zn, and others. The study of presence of metals in naphthides has enabled one to consider various types of petroleum-metallogenic provinces (PMP) (Table 1).
Theory and Background The study of micro-elements in the naphthides enables one to solve a number of problems (Fig. 1). For us, the major interest is making an industrial reserve estimation. Here, we shall discuss it in details relatively to the gold-extraction prospectives of a concrete natural object.
In fact, the absorptional abilities of petroleum with respect to gold have already been used in the preparation of ore samples for an atomic-absorptional analysis. This was the point that gave the authors an idea of a possible existence of such an absorption in the nature, in the case of a lasting contact of petroleum with the rocks enriched with the gold.
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