Minerals Exploration

Advanced Technology for Buried Mineral Deposits

The GORE™ Survey for Minerals is used to explore for buried deposits of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc.  These mineralized deposits emit very low levels of volatile organic and inorganic compounds that migrate vertically toward the earth's surface.  Gore's unique and highly sensitive passive diffusion module can detect these compounds in soil gas at levels in the part per trillion range. 

Modules are analyzed using sensitive gas chromatography, mass spectroscopy, and elemental analysis to determine geochemicals including a variety of organic compounds from C2 to C20 plus volatile sulfur compounds including molecular sulfur (S8), carbon disulfide, carbonyl sulfide, and methylated sulfides.

Surface Geochemical Modeling

Gore's approach to geochemical modeling and interpretation is a significant departure from traditional surface geochemical methods.  This approach differentiates "mineralization" inorganic and organic gases from those originating from country rock, shallow pollution, or vegetation.  Gore's geochemical modeling falls into two general categories depending on the exploration objective.

In mine site exploration applications, GORE  Modules are installed at locations of known mineralization and non-mineralization.  The geochemical soil gas signatures, determined from these known sites, are compared with soil gas signatures of unknown geochemical character, collected from modules installed at survey sample points, using multivariate statistics.  This method is empirically based as drill sites are employed in the survey design for surface soil gas sampling.

In grass-roots exploration where no known mineralization exist, geochemical modeling consists of identifying geochemical anomalies in the soil gas signatures using statistical clustering, factor analysis and other statistical techniques. The results are presented as color contour maps of the geochemical anomalies.  Geophysical information and other exploration data can be integrated with the soil gas results in your map compositions.

GORE™ Surveys for Mineral Exploration Brochure (1.0 MB PDF)