Advanced Mineralogy Lecture Note

Abstract

This lecture note covers three topics in MGY 421 (Advanced Mineralogy) for 400-level students of Marine Geology at Nigeria Maritime University. The first topic is the instrumental methods used to identify minerals and measure their composition. It explains how X-rays are produced and covers Bragg’s law and powder X-ray diffraction, including identifying minerals, estimating their proportions and measuring crystallite size. It then describes how an electron beam interacts with a sample, the principles of SEM-EDS, WDS and the electron microprobe, how a mineral formula is calculated from an analysis, and the use of XRF and related methods. The second topic deals with clay minerals and marine authigenic minerals. It covers clay structures, groups, cation exchange capacity and swelling, and identifying clays by X-ray diffraction of oriented mounts. It explains the climatic and diagenetic controls on clay minerals in marine sediments, and the origin and significance of glauconite, phosphorite, zeolites, pyrite, evaporites, barite and ferromanganese oxides. The third topic introduces ore mineralogy: the reflected-light microscope, the optical and physical properties of ore minerals, a scheme for identifying them, ore textures and paragenesis, and applications to modal analysis, grade, liberation and processing, with examples from Nigeria. The note includes worked examples, 14 diagrams, key equations, review questions, a glossary and references.