Political and commercial geology and the world's mineral resources
Science
Political and commercial geology and the world's mineral resources
Geology, Economic; Mines and mineral resources
=Peruvian Deposits.=--The largest deposits of vanadium in the world,
and the most important, were until recently controlled by the American
Vanadium Co. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which in 1919 was absorbed
by the Vanadium Products Corporation, allied to the Bethlehem Steel
Corporation. These deposits are at Minasragra, Peru, 20 miles from
Cerro de Pasco. The area lies along the western limit of a broad
anticline in Juratrias and Cretaceous rocks. A section shows the
series in this locality to be composed of green shales, thin beds of
limestone, and red shales. Vanadium is found only in the red shales.
The deposit proper appears to be a lens-shaped mass, 28 feet wide and
350 feet long. The ore contains several minerals. The mineral that
constitutes the large portion of the deposit is called “quisqueite”;
it is a black carbonaceous substance containing sulphur. There is also
a lesser quantity of a coke-like material. Neither of these contains
vanadium. The vanadium is mostly at the southern end of the ore body,
and to a depth of 20 feet is largely in the form of red calcium
vanadate, which is brighter colored then the calcium vanadate in
Colorado and Utah, and carries as much as 50 per cent. vanadium oxide.
It occurs in small pockets and fills the cracks and fissures in a fine
shale. Below this shale is the “mother lode,” which is 9 to 30 feet
thick, extends along the greater length of the deposit, and carries as
high as 10 per cent. vanadium oxide and nearly as much sulphur. On the
east and south sides, below the “mother lode,” is a hard blue-black
vanadium shale, carrying as much as 13 per cent. vanadium oxide and
4 to 5 per cent. sulphur. Patronite, the main vanadium mineral, is
greenish black and contains 19 to 24.8 per cent. vanadium oxide and
in places 50 to 55 per cent. of combined sulphur. The patronite
originally almost reached the surface and is most abundant in the north
half of the lens. The whole ore body is almost completely inclosed by
porphyry dikes and contains two or three intrusions. These deposits
are controlled by the American Vanadium Co., and its successor, the
Vanadium Products Corporation, through a concession from the Peruvian
government. They are large, but are by no means inexhaustible, and
as they are entirely local they are not likely to be duplicated. No
similar deposits are known, either in Peru or in any other part of the
world.
In 1917 the American Vanadium Co. treated 5,236 gross tons of ore, from
which it extracted 2,122,005 pounds of vanadic acid. From this vanadic
acid the company manufactured 4,925,014 pounds of ferrovanadium. The
company did not buy any ore in this country, but relied entirely upon
its Peruvian production.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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