Potash deposit

In the UK workable potash deposits are confined to the Cleveland-North Yorkshire bed which is 11 m thick and has reserves of >500million tonnes. Massive recovery is also possible from brines e.g. Jordan has a huge plant capable of recovering up to a million tonnes pa from the Dead Sea and the annual production by this country and by Israel now matches that of the USA and France. 

The St. George s Bay Sub-basin of western Newfoundland is contained within the Carboniferous Maritimes Basin (Fig. 1) and hosts sedimentary rocks assigned to the Codroy Group. The Codroy Group is equivalent to the Windsor Group, which hosts potash deposits and occurrences in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, including Potash Corporation s Penobsquis Mine in Sussex. Annual production from this deposit comprises 0.7... 

The St. Georges Sub-basin is considered prospective but underexplored for potash deposits. 

Moore, G. et al. 2008. National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report on Penobsquis Picadilly Potash Deposits, Kings County, New Brunswick, Canada. Potash Corporation of Saskachawan Inc., 83 p. Valyashko, M.G. 1956. Geochemistry of bromine in the processes of salt deposition and the use of the bromine content as a genetic and prospecting criterion. Geochemistry, 6, 570-589. 

In the latter half of the nineteenth centuiy the United States was dependent on the vast Stassfurt deposits of Germany for the potassium compounds needed as fertilizers. In 1911 Congress appropriated funds for a search for domestic minerals, salts, brines, and seaweeds suitable for potash production (67). The complex brines of Searles Lake, California, a rich source of potassium chloride, have been worked up scientifically on the basis of phase-rule studies with outstanding success. Oil drillers exploring the Permian Basin for oil became aware of the possibility of discovering potash deposits through chemical analysis of the cores of saline strata. A rich bed of sylvinite, a natural mixture of sylvite (potassium chloride) and halite (sodium chloride), was found at Carlsbad, New Mexico. At the potash plane near Wendover, Utah, the raw material, a brine, is worked up by solar evaporation (67). 

Natural resources within any major salt basin are an ever-present potential. In preliminary siting of WIPP, known hydrocarbon trends and potash deposits were avoided by the three-square mile repository area. Some potash and potentially some hydrocarbons exist within the buffer zones established for WIPP. The estimated amount of these resources, which may be denied by WIPP, are 13.1 million tons of potash product (K2O) 23.5 billion cubic feet of gas and 42.5 thousand barrels of oil. Many of these resources may not be... 

The results of a field test on a thin-bedded potash deposit have been reported by Davis and Shock (D3). Kalium Chemicals, Ltd., in Saskatchewan, Canada (M29), a pioneer in the solution mining of potash since 196.5, have been joined by Texas Gulf Sulphur in their Cane Creek property in Utah (C14). 

Cendon, D.I., Ayora, C., Pueyo J.J. (1998) The origin of barren bodies in the Subiza potash deposit, Navarra, Spain Implications for sylvite formation. Journal of Sedimentary Research 68, 43-52. 

The two largest known potash deposits in the world (Saskatchewan and Belarus) are of... 

Devonian origin. The Permian deposits in Germany, the United States and Russia were, for a long period, the classical salt deposits and the most important potash reserves, but lost their economic importance after World War II. However, the known potential of extractable potash deposits is large enough for the world supply to be guaranteed for many hundreds of years to come (Schultz et al. 2002). 

The halogens are so reactive that they are found naturally only as compounds. The first mineral found to contain bromine (bro-margyrite, AgBr) was discovered in Mexico in 1841, and industrial production of bromides followed the discovery of the giant Stassfurt potash deposits in Germany in 1858. All methods of bromine production depend on the oxidation of bromide ions. There are no naturally occurring oxygen salts of bromine that would act as a source of the element. Commercial recovery of bromine from brines and from seawater involves the oxidation of the bromide ions in solution with CI2 to free elemental bro-... 

In general, potash deposits located at depths less than 1100 m below surface are exploited by conventional mining method. Solution mining methods... 

Figure 3. Potash Deposit in Saskatchewan (From Saskatchewan Energy and Resources (SER) Website). 

Large, deeply buried potash deposits are mainly associated with marine e aporite sequences and less commonly with non-marine evaporites throughout the world. Potash deposits occur on every inhabited continent and have been identified in most geologic time periods from the Cambrian to the present. The most abundant potash mineral in commercial potash deposits is sydvite Sylvite and halite (NaCl) form the common potash ore called sylvinite. In most occurrences, fairly pure sylvinite... 

On a worldwide basis, there appear to be as many as 100 large buried potash deposits that could produce products of commercial quality and about the same number of significant potash brine deposits. The buried deposits are primarily of marine origin. Surprisingly, the exact mode of the formation of these deposits, as well as a smaller number of deposits that are associated with hot springs, is not known and is the subject of considerable speculation. 

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