The Point Lookout Sandstone on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in Rio Arriba County contains geological layers called “beach placer deposits”. Beach-placer sandstone deposits are accumulations of dense minerals that form on beaches, or in shallow ocean water. They form by mechanical settling of heavy minerals by the action of waves, currents, and winds. These deposits contain Rare Earth Elements (REE) which are important commodities required to manufacture green technologies, like wind turbines and hybrid/electric cars and are essential in most of our electronic devices, like cell phones and laptop computers.
In 2013, a team of New Mexico Tech researchers began a study of uranium transport, uranium source characteristics, and uranium legacy issues in New Mexico. The effort was funded by Energize New Mexico, a five-year NSF EPSCoR program that concluded in 2018 and that encompassed five research components focused on developing non-carbon emitting energy technologies. The uranium team, which included researchers from UNM, addressed uranium deposits and mine waste mainly in the Grants Mining District, including Laguna Pueblo, and on Navajo Nation lands. These uranium studies span a range of science and engineering disciplines, and not only provide new conclusions impacting remediation, hazard management, and uranium extraction, but hold implications for human health.
Although no uranium mines are operating in New Mexico today, the legacy of the mining industry requires continuing evaluation and remediation of inactive or abandoned mine features, which number around 300 for the uranium industry alone. The sites of mining activities can offer physical and chemical threats to individuals, communities and the environment. Dr. Virginia McLemore has assembled a team of New Mexico Tech students to evaluate mine sites throughout New Mexico as part of the Abandoned Mine Lands Project.
At the forefront of cutting-edge research at New Mexico Tech, we have been utilizing Raman spectroscopy to unravel the mysteries locked within minerals. By harnessing the power of visible and ultraviolet lasers, we can unlock a plethora of information. So, you may be asking, what is Raman spectroscopy? In simple terms, it's a technique that uses laser light to interact with the atomic vibrations of a material, producing a unique "fingerprint" of its molecular composition. By analyzing the scattered light, we are able to identify and characterize minerals such as apatite, fluorite, and calcite.
There are tens of thousands of inactive mine features in 274 mining districts in New Mexico (including coal, uranium, metals, and industrial minerals districts). However, many of these mines have not been inventoried or prioritized for reclamation or reprocessing. Many of these mines have existing mine wastes, generated during mineral production, which could have potential for critical minerals, especially since the actual mineral production was generally for precious and base metals and not critical minerals. The purpose of this project is to inventory, characterize and estimate the critical mineral endowment of mine wastes using USGS sampling procedures. This project is important to the state of New Mexico because critical mineral resources must be identified before land exchanges, withdrawals or other land use decisions are made by government officials. Future mining of mine wastes that potentially contain critical minerals will directly benefit the economy of New Mexico. Possible re-mining and/or reprocessing of mine wastes could clean up these sites and pay for reclamation. Furthermore, this project will include training of younger, professional geologists and students in economic and reclamation geology by the PIs.
The Department of Energy has awarded New Mexico Tech a contract to examine rare earth elements (REE) and other critical minerals (CM) in coal and associated strata in the San Juan and Raton basins in northern New Mexico. Critical minerals are mineral resources that are essential to our economy and whose supply may be disrupted (/publications/periodicals/earthmatters/23/n1/em_v23_n1.pdf). Most CM are 100% imported into the U.S. Many CM are found in the San Juan and Raton basins of New Mexico.
Somewhere in the Earth’s crust a hot fluid is seeping through tiny cracks and fissures in the rock. The fluid is water and it carries with it a cargo of dissolved ions like chloride, sulfate, or carbonate. It might also carry dissolved metal ions useful to humans such copper, gold, or, in the case that we are considering, rare earth elements (REE). Fluids like this play important roles in forming ore deposits where the REE are present in high enough amounts to be mined. We want to understand how the REE interact with other dissolved ions and the water itself in order to better understand the conditions that allow water to mobilize, transport, or deposit REE.
Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe but is rare on Earth. Helium has unique physical and chemical properties that render it indispensable to our modern technological society – it is requisite for the operation of MRI instruments and in the manufacture of computer chips and fiber optic cables. However, helium gas deposits are rare, and helium is typically a trace component of natural gases being emitted at the Earth’s surface. As established supplies have become stressed, the price of helium gas has increases from $18 per thousand ft3 to more than $200 per thousand ft3. Helium has been mined in New Mexico, and the location of helium resources has been mapped by Ron Broadhead, our principal senior petroleum geologist at the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources.
Chevron, Inc. (formerly Molycorp, Inc.) funded a major consortium to assess and identify the future risk of weathering on physical failure of existing rock piles based on the physical, chemical and mineralogical composition and weathering of the piles at Chevron's Questa mine, in Taos County, New Mexico.
The Hillsboro district, in central New Mexico, is an example of the typical geologic style of the development of Laramide porphyry copper deposits in southwestern United States. Porphyry copper deposits form from hydrothermal fluids that come from a magmatic source, generally a volcano. The copper is concentrated first by magmatic-hydrothermal processes, then copper can be further concentrated by later supergene fluids, typically meteoric waters. Porphyry copper deposits typically are large deposits and are mined mostly by open pit methods and can have by-product production of gold, silver, molybdenum, and other metals. Other types of deposits, such as skarns and polymetallic veins can occur near the porphyry copper deposits. Much of the world's copper is produced from porphyry copper deposits.
