PHYSIOGRAPHIC REGIONS OF THE SEA FLOOR AND THEIR MINERAL POTENTIAL REGARD TO METAL CONCENTRATION PROCESS IN AQUEUS ENVIRONMENT

8th International Scientific Conference - SGEM2008, www.sgem.org, SGEM2008 Conference Proceedings/ ISBN: 954-918181-2, June 16-20, 2008, Vol. 1, 547-555 pp

ABSTRACT

Defining the mineral potential of the sea floor could be handled by different methods,
but the prerequisites for each methods is to clear the conditions of precipitation
environment such as physico – chemical conditions and also it depends on the type of
precipitant. The appearance of any mineral in the sea floor strongly depends on the
aqueous environment and the physical prosperities of the mineral. In this article, first of
all, I considered the physiographic regions of the sea floor in entire the world, an
according to this zoning I cleared the primary mineral potential of each region. But the
most important process that can make it to be as a mineral deposit is the concentration
process. In the next step I tried to model these processes or different reactions between
the aqueous phase as the precipitation environment and the solid phase as the
precipitant. These conditions are different from each environment to the other, or
different from each ocean to the other. The most important of them that I considered to
make the model are; selective sorting, selective leaching, concentration from aqueous
solution, diagenesis and post diagenetic concentration process. Now by introducing the
environmental conditions of the precipitation environment and the physico – chemical
prosperities of the precipitant to the model, one can predict the mineral potential of the
sea floor.

Keywords: Physiography, Diagenesis, Precipitation Process, Aqueous Environment.