Baryte. Char­ac­ter­is­tics, types, dis­tri­b­u­tion

Baryte or “heavy spar” is a nat­ur­al bar­i­um sul­fate, wide­ly dis­trib­uted in the earth’s crust. Free bar­i­um is not found in nature. Pos­sess­ing high chem­i­cal activ­i­ty, it eas­i­ly forms var­i­ous chem­i­cal com­pounds (car­bon­ates, nitrates, sul­fates, sil­i­cates, etc.).

That is, baryte is a min­er­al with a mul­ti-pur­pose pur­pose, the areas of use of which are con­stant­ly expand­ing and the vol­umes of con­sump­tion are increas­ing. The indus­tri­al use of baryte is deter­mined by its physic­o­chem­i­cal prop­er­ties: high den­si­ty, chem­i­cal inert­ness, abil­i­ty to absorb gam­ma rays, white­ness and trans­paren­cy of some vari­eties, tox­i­c­i­ty of bar­i­um com­pounds. Baryte is includ­ed in the list of min­er­als of nation­al impor­tance approved by the Res­o­lu­tion of the Cab­i­net of Min­is­ters of Ukraine dat­ed Decem­ber 12, 1994, No. 827, as a chem­i­cal raw mate­r­i­al and raw mate­r­i­al for the prepa­ra­tion of drilling flu­ids.

Areas of use

Fine­ly ground, coarse­ly ground and flota­tion baryte are used. Depend­ing on the area of baryte con­sump­tion, the require­ments for the qual­i­ty of the raw mate­r­i­al also change, which are reg­u­lat­ed by the spe­cial tech­ni­cal con­di­tions of the rel­e­vant indus­tries and stan­dards.

Fine­ly ground baryte is used main­ly as a weight­ing agent in the oil and gas indus­try to give the nec­es­sary den­si­ty to drilling flu­ids. Coarse­ly ground is used as a raw mate­r­i­al in the pro­duc­tion of bar­i­um com­pounds.

Formation conditions

Baryte deposits are formed in a wide range of geo­log­i­cal con­di­tions — from post-mag­mat­ic to chemogenic sed­i­men­ta­ry. Impor­tant con­di­tions for the crys­tal­liza­tion of baryte are high par­tial pres­sure of oxy­gen and rel­a­tive­ly low tem­per­a­tures, which explains its for­ma­tion at rel­a­tive­ly shal­low depths and a decrease in its con­tent in all post-mag­mat­ic deposits with depth.

Bar­i­um is trans­port­ed in hydrother­mal con­di­tions by chlo­ride and car­bon diox­ide solu­tions of alka­li and alka­line earth met­als. In sed­i­men­ta­ry deposits, the amount of bar­i­um decreas­es with dis­tance from the coast­line of pale­obasins.

Accord­ing to the con­di­tions of barite pre­cip­i­ta­tion from solu­tions, the con­di­tions of occur­rence of ore bod­ies among hydrother­mal deposits, vein and meta­so­mat­ic are dis­tin­guished, and these deposits occur togeth­er with­in the same deposit.

Among baryte ores, baryte prop­er and com­plex are dis­tin­guished; lumpy, ground baryte and grav­i­ty con­cen­trate are obtained from baryte ores, and flota­tion con­cen­trate is obtained from com­plex ores.

Baryte ores usu­al­ly require enrich­ment. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly rich baryte ores are usu­al­ly enriched by wash­ing and man­u­al sort­ing, and in some cas­es are used with­out pri­or enrich­ment. Sandy-clay-barite ores of elu­vial plac­ers are most eas­i­ly enriched: baryte can be obtained after wash­ing and sort­ing.

The main enrich­ment method for extract­ing baryte from fine­ly dis­persed and com­plex ores is flota­tion. Baryte is a read­i­ly flotable min­er­al used as a col­lec­tor of car­boxylic acids, alkyl sul­fates, and cation­ic reagents.

Deposits in Ukraine

In Ukraine, baryte occur­rences are known in the East Carpathi­an, Donet­sk, Crimean-Black Sea barite-bear­ing provinces and on the Ukrain­ian Shield.

The largest occur­rences and deposits of baryte are locat­ed in the Tran­scarpathi­an region and are observed in the zone of the Tran­scarpathi­an inter­nal depres­sion with­in the Bere­gov ore dis­trict, which is part of a sin­gle baryte-gold poly­metal­lic ore for­ma­tion.

The main use­ful com­po­nents of the for­ma­tion are lead, zinc, gold, sil­ver, bar­i­um, which are found togeth­er in almost all deposits and ore occur­rences, but in dif­fer­ent quan­ti­ties and ratios. Ore bod­ies are veins, vein­lets, zones of inclu­sions, stock­works. They are local­ized in fault zones asso­ci­at­ed with the for­ma­tion of tec­ton­ic-vol­canic struc­tures of var­i­ous types and orders.

The Bigan gold-barite poly­metal­lic deposit is locat­ed with­in an iso­lat­ed sin­gle uplift called the Bigan anti­cline. The ore-bear­ing zone is the fault zone embed­ded in the west­ern wing of the anti­cline.

There are two types of baryte, dif­fer­ing in mor­phol­o­gy and gen­e­sis:
1) Veined;
2) Impreg­nat­ed (in the form of drus­es of sin­gle crys­tals in cav­i­ties and voids of leach­ing of alu­ni­tized rocks).

The most com­mon is vein baryte, which is part of the upper (baryte) and mid­dle (baryte-poly­metal­lic) parts of the ore bod­ies and has indus­tri­al capac­i­ty.

Impreg­nat­ed baryte is found in rocks of the sec­ondary quartzite facies main­ly in the zone of devel­op­ment of oxi­dized rocks togeth­er with alu­nite, hal­loysite, and iron hydrox­ides. It has no indus­tri­al val­ue.

Accord­ing to gen­er­al esti­mates, the total reserves of baryte ores with­in the Biganske ore field are esti­mat­ed at 5.5–5.6 mil­lion tons.

Baryte ores of the Biganske deposit, in terms of the con­tent of the main com­po­nents and spe­cif­ic grav­i­ty, can be suc­cess­ful­ly used in the chem­i­cal and oil and gas indus­tries.

The deposit has anoth­er type of min­er­al – alu­nites, which occur in the open­ing of baryte poly­metal­lic ores. The reserves of this min­er­al, which can be used as a raw mate­r­i­al for alu­minum pro­duc­tion, are quite large.

The pre­vi­ous­ly explored reserves of alu­nite ores are 195 mil­lion tons with an aver­age alu­nite con­tent in the rock of 35%. Alu­nite con­cen­trate can be obtained by using a flota­tion enrich­ment scheme, and its hydromet­al­lur­gi­cal pro­cess­ing can be car­ried out by two meth­ods: reduc­ing-alka­line and sul­fu­ric acid (hydrother­mal-ammon­ic).

Alum and coag­u­lants (a mix­ture of alu­minum sul­fate and alu­minum-potas­si­um alum) for the pro­duc­tion of stressed cement are also pro­duced from alu­nite. The main obsta­cle to the cost-effec­tive exploita­tion of the Bigan deposit is the pres­ence of a sig­nif­i­cant amount of opal in the ores, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pli­cates the tech­nol­o­gy of their pro­cess­ing. A neg­a­tive fac­tor is also the low con­tent of alu­nite (on aver­age 35%), which does not meet the require­ments for alu­nite raw mate­ri­als for alu­mi­na pro­duc­tion.

In addi­tion, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly sim­ple alu­nite ores with­in the ore zones con­tain baryte and sil­ver-poly­metal­lic min­er­al­iza­tion with gold, which also com­pli­cates the process of enrich­ment of alu­nite ore. It is the Bere­givske, Dobrosilske, Lopush­nanske deposits that make up the Bere­govske ore field. Unlike the Biganske deposit, the ores here are of high­er qual­i­ty. They do not con­tain opal, and the alu­nite con­tent in them is 30–45%.

The Biganske baryte-alu­nite-poly­metal­lic deposit is com­posed of sec­ondary quartzites, bere­sites, which are local­ized among the Miocene vol­canic rocks of the Vygor­lat-Hutyn­s­ka ridge. The approved reserves of baryte by the State Min­er­al Resources and Min­er­al Resources Agency amount to 926 thou­sand tons. Baryte ore min­ing is pos­si­ble only under­ground, how­ev­er, giv­en that the deposit belongs to com­plex ones (asso­ci­at­ed min­er­als are alu­nite, lead-zinc ores with gold and sil­ver), the prof­itabil­i­ty of its exploita­tion is advis­able.

Veined baryte in the deposit is very rare, inter­spersed with alu­ni­tized tuffs in the form of elon­gat­ed pris­mat­ic crys­tals, often of an unusu­al appear­ance (strong­ly elon­gat­ed ellip­ti­cal round­ed grains).

The Bere­givske ore dis­trict also con­tains the Bere­givske gold-poly­metal­lic deposit, where baryte min­er­al­iza­tion is devel­oped in the upper hori­zons.

Near the Bere­givske deposit, there are sev­er­al more promis­ing areas for baryte ore, where quartz-baryte veins with a BaSO₄ con­tent of 17.8 to 60% have been dis­cov­ered.

At the Bakhtyn flu­o­rite deposit, locat­ed in the Vin­nyt­sia region, baryte is occa­sion­al­ly found togeth­er with flu­o­rite. Flu­o­rite ore, con­tain­ing 9.5–17.7% flu­o­rite, con­tains 0.7–1.6% barite. It forms cement in sand­stones, cor­rod­ing and eat­ing away clas­to­genic quartz and feldspars in cracks.

A large baryte body is also con­fined to the Travnev tec­ton­ic zone. The thick­ness of the ore zone is from 10 to 100 m. The zone is char­ac­ter­ized by numer­ous pinch­es, swellings of vein bod­ies, sec­tions of veins and apophy­ses. Baryte ores of the Travnev baryte zone have been explored in detail by adit and wells. The baryte con­tent in the ores ranges from 16 to 70%, aver­ag­ing 33.5% across the deposit. Total explored reserves of baryte ores in cat­e­gories B+C₁ are 4547 thou­sand tons.

In gen­er­al, baryte is a promis­ing min­er­al for the devel­op­ment of the econ­o­my of Ukraine, giv­en its wide appli­ca­tion and grow­ing demand in the world mar­ket. Fur­ther explo­ration and devel­op­ment of deposits, as well as improve­ment of baryte min­ing and pro­cess­ing tech­nolo­gies, will con­tribute to increas­ing its pro­duc­tion and effec­tive use in indus­try.