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Analysis of Tyrrell Sea Deposits from the Vicinity of the Victor Diamond Mine: Comparison of Four North American Clay Deposits

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Analysis of Tyrrell Sea Deposits from the Vicinity of the Victor Diamond Mine: Comparison of Four North American Clay Deposits Analysis of Tyrrell Sea Deposits from the Vicinity of the Victor Diamond Mine: Comparison of Four North American Clay Deposits by Jean Elizabeth Holloway An Undergraduate Thesis submitted to the School of Environmental Studies In conformity with the requirements for a Bachelors of Science Honours Degree Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada April 2012 ii Abstract The De Beers Victor Mine is an open pit diamond mine, located in the James Bay lowlands of northeastern Ontario. The lowlands are characterized by extensive peatlands overlying Tyrrell Sea sediments. One of the potential impacts of open pit mining, and the focus of the current research, is the potential for differential subsidence in the Tyrrell Sea sediments owing to continuous groundwater withdrawal from the underlying limestone aquifers. To fully understand the potential effects of subsidence, a better understanding of the nature and properties of the Tyrrell Sea sediments is needed. Subsidence is related to characteristics of the deposit, which will be determined by calculating four geotechnical properties. These properties of samples collected from the sediments of the Victor Diamond Mine were compared to the values from samples of Lake Agassiz sediments, Champlain Sea sediments, and the Bearpaw Shale. The properties of hydraulic conductivity, grain size, plastic and liquid limit, and mineralogy were determined for each sample and the results were analyzed and compared to data collected from the literature. The results indicate that the Tyrrell Sea sediments are a low plasticity clay, with a low liquid limit, a hydraulic conductivity higher than all the other clay deposits, is characterized as a clayey silt in terms of grain size, and has a mineralogy primarily containing quartz, illite, chlinochlore, and calcite. The mineralogy shows that the Tyrrell Sea sediment does not contain smectite minerals, which indicates that there is no relationship between Lake Agassiz and this deposit. iii Acknowledgments First and foremost I would like to thank my Thesis Supervisor, Dr. Vicki Remenda. She gave me the wonderful opportunity to travel to the Victor Mine and collect my own samples, as well as made this entire project possible. Second, I would like to recognize Kelly Ali, the graduate student that I spent the summer working with at the Victor Mine. Without her mentoring and guidance this project would not have been possible. Kelly has impacted my life in the most positive of ways, has taught me a great deal, and her friendship will be cherished for a long time to come. I would also like to give a special thank-you to Dr. Brian Cumming, who was my Thesis Course Coordinator, but also supplied me with my sample of Lake Agassiz clay. Similarly, Dave Sharpe from the GSC was extremely helpful in supplying me with a sample of Champlain Sea clay. A special thank-you to Alan Grant, of the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at Queen’s, who patiently answered all of my questions about XRD. Without these contributions laboratory analysis would have been very limited! A special thank-you to Dr. Neal Scott for sitting on my Supervisory Committee. Tribute needs to be paid to NSERC, as funding came from them, as well as to De Beers Canada Ltd. In particular, thanks to Brian Steinbeck for being so cooperative. Thanks to everyone at the Victor Mine, this could not have been done without your support. Thank you to all the other students and professors working on research at the Victor Mine, especially Pete Whittington for providing me with hydraulic conductivity data for the peat. Lastly, I want to thank my father, Art Holloway, who edited this paper for me, as well as spent many long hours discussing the results and conclusions. Many more hours to come, Dad. iv Table of Contents Abstract ………………….………………….………………….………………….………………………… ii Acknowledgements ………………….………………….………………….………………….………. iii Table of Contents ….………………….………………….………………….………………………….. iv List of Figures ………….………………….………………….………………….………………………... v List of Tables ………….………………….………………….………………….………………………… vi List of Common Abbreviations ..………………….………………….…………………….……… vii Section 1: Introduction ………….………………….………………….……………………….… 1 1.1: Tyrrell Sea ………….………………….………………….……………………….…… 3 1.2: Lake Agassiz ……….………………….………………….……………………….…… 4 1.3: Bearpaw Shale ….………………….………………….……………………….…...… 6 1.4: Champlain Sea ….………………….……………...….……………………….……… 7 Section 2: Materials and Methods ………….……………...….…………………………..….. 9 2.1: Determining Hydraulic Conductivity ……...….……………………..….….. 10 2.2: Determining Plastic and Liquid Limits …...….………………………….…. 11 2.3: Determining Grain Size ……….……………...….……………..……………..….. 13 2.4: Determining Mineralogy …….……………...….……………..……………..…... 13 Section 3: Results ….………………….………………….………………….……………………… 17 3.1: Plastic and Liquid Limit ……………….……………………..…………………… 17 3.2: Grain Size ………………….………………….………………….……………………... 18 3.3: Hydraulic Conductivity ………………….………………….……………………... 19 3.4: Mineralogy ……………….………………….………………….…………………….... 19 Section 4: Discussion ……………….………………….………………….……………………..... 24 References …………….………………….………………...……………………...................................... 31 Summary……………….………………….………………….……………………...................................... 34 Appendix A: Liquid Limit Calculatios……………....……………………..................................... 44 Appendix B: Grain Size Distributions …………….…………………………................................ 48 Appendix C: X-Ray Diffraction Scans ….………………….……………………........................... 52 Appendix D: Classification Systems …………….………….…………….……….......................... 60 v List of Figures Figure 1: Map of Sampling Locations ….………………….……………………............................. 36 Figure 2: Map of Research Transect at the De Beers Victor Mine…............................... 36 Figure 3: USCS Plasticity Chart (ASTM, 2006) ….………………….……………………........... 37 Figure 4: Hydraulic Conductivity vs. Liquid Limit ….………………….………………...….... 37 Figure 5: Clay Fraction vs. Hydraulic Conductivity ….………………….……………...…….. 38 Figure 6: Liquid Limit vs. Clay Fraction ….…..…………….…………………….......................... 39 Figure 7: X-Ray Diffraction Scan of Tyrrell Sea and Lake Agassiz ………....................... 40 vi List of Tables Table 1: Laboratory results calculated in this study for plastic limit (PL), liquid limit (LL), grain-size, and hydraulic conductivity (K) ………................................. 41 Table 2: Data collected from relevant literature to use for comparison with results calculated in this study for plastic limit (PL), liquid limit (LL), grain size, and hydraulic conductivity (K) ……….............................………............................. 42 Table 3: Classification of samples based on their plasticity, and a combination of their plasticity and grain size …….............................……….............................……….............. 43 vii List of Common Abbreviations PI – Plasticity Index PL – Plastic Limit LL – Liquid Limit XRD – X-ray Diffraction ASTM – American Society for Testing and Materials USCS – Unified Soil Classification System K – Hydraulic Conductivity 1 Section 1: Introduction The De Beers Victor Mine is Ontario’s first diamond mine, and is located at 52° 49’ 15” latitude, 83° 53’ 00” longitude, approximately 90 km west of the community of Attawapiskat (De Beers Canada, 2009), in the James Bay lowlands (Figure 1). The lowlands are characterized by extensive peatlands overlying Tyrrell Sea Sediments and discontinuous tills, which in turn overlie Silurian limestone aquifers. The James Bay Lowlands are the third largest wetland zone in the world (Environment Canada, 2005), and their limestone bedrock is home to many kimberlite pipes, some of which are diamondiferous. One of the potential impacts of open pit mining, and the focus of the current work, is the potential for differential subsidence within the Tyrrell Sea sediments owing to continuous groundwater withdrawal from the underlying limestone aquifers. Pumping may result in partial and variable drainage of the peatlands (Branfireun et al., 2007). This drainage has potential for changes in the hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological functions and properties of the wetlands. The magnitude of these changes is directly correlated to the connectivity between the peatland and the limestone aquifer (Branfireun et al., 2007). To fully analyze the connectivity of the system, further understanding of the nature and properties of the fine-grained sediments underlying the peat is necessary. There is some ambiguity when discussing the term “clay”. Clay can either refer to clay minerals, or the clay particle size fraction, and either or both can be present in one deposit. In terms of particle size, clays are mostly platy microscopic particles of mica, clay minerals, and other minerals including quartz and feldspar (Das, 1999). 2 The grain-size boundary identified by Das (1999) for clay is 2 µm, and will be used in this thesis. Clay minerals will be discussed in Section 2.4: Determining Mineralogy. Clay is defined as natural material with high plasticity, small particle size, the property of hardening when fired, or a combination of any of the two (Mackenzie & Mitchell, 1966). This project used Mackenzie & Mitchell’s (1966) definition of clay, being the properties of plasticity, grain size, and mineralogy, to characterize the Tyrrell Sea deposits within the vicinity of the Victor Mine. This report investigated four geotechnical properties of the Tyrrell Sea sediments: the hydraulic conductivity, the Atterberg limits, grain
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