Mineralogical and geochemical study of Lake Dojran sediments (Republic of Macedonia)

Abstract

In this study the mineralogical and geochemical characteristics of Lake Dojran surficial (0-5, 5-10, 10-15 cm) sediments were studied in order to determine their suitability for use as potential raw material in balneotherapeutic treatments. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analyses were performed, and thereupon chemical index of alteration (CIA) and enrichment factor (EF) values were calculated. The XRD results revealed close association of sediment mineralogy with the prevailing metamorphic, volcanic and igneous rocks of the region surrounding Lake Dojran. CIA values of around 67% suggest a moderate degree of weathering in the lake catchment area. According to the EF value results, surficial Lake Dojran sediments are little enriched with Co, Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn, moderately enriched with Au, Ni and Sb, moderately severely enriched with Au, severely enriched with Sb and very severely enriched with As. This elemental enrichment likely originates from various different geogenic (geological background and polymetallic mineralization) and anthropogenic (tourism, traffic, coatings, untreated wastewater discharge and agrochemicals) sources. The abundances of the major elements, trace elements and rare earth elements (REEs) were almost constant, changing very little throughout the surficial (0-5, 5-10, 10-15 cm) sediments. Comparison of sediment trace element concentrations with consensus-based threshold effect concentration (TEC) and probable effect concentration (PEC) values showed that lake biota may be under threat of contamination with As, Cu and Ni. Given the present results, we cannot recommend/confirm the application of Lake Dojran dark mud sediment in balneotherapeutic treatments.

Mineralogical and geochemical features of alluvial sediments from the Lobo watershed (Southern Cameroon): Implications for rutile exploration

“…It is defined as CIA = Al 2 O 3 / (Al 2 O 3 + CaO* + Na 2 O + K 2 O) Â 100 (molar contents, with CaO* being the CaO content in the silicate fraction of the sample). If the CaO molar content is greater than that of Na 2 O, CaO* is assumed to be equivalent to Na 2 O, whereas if the CaO molar content is less than that of Na 2 O, the measured CaO content can be used for CaO* S ˇmuc et al, 2015). An unweathered rock has the lowest CIA (about 50% or less).…”

“…geochemistry and their elemental ratios are useful to provide information about the sediments' origin as well as the weathering conditions of the source areas. The major element geochemistry of sediments tends to reflect the source rock composition (Armstrong-Altrin et al, 2012) and weathering intensity S ˇmuc et al, 2015). Trace elements such as REE, Y, Th, Zr, Hf, Nb and Sc are suited to investigate the sediments' provenance (Martins et al, 2012;Prego et al, 2012), because of their relatively low mobility during the sedimentary processes (Ahmad et al, 2014;Asadi et al, 2013).…”

Environmental Pollution by Heavy Metals in the Gold Mining Region of East Cameroon

“…It enables to differentiate heavy metals originating from anthropogenic sources and those of natural sources (Emmanuel et al, 2014;Salati and Moore, 2010). The enrichment factor was calculated using the formula used by number of authors (Abhijit and Ramkrishna, 2017;Tariq et al, 2018;Smuc et al, 2015;Zahran et al, 2015;Jiao et al, 2015) and given by the following Equation 4:…”

Biomineralix (COST Action TD0903), 2009-2014: An Overview

“…The techniques used were microprobe analysis, Raman spectroscopy, EDS, WDS spectroscopy and mapping. The activity of WG3 resulted in several publications [60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75] and in 9 short-term scientific missions.…”