The Yellowknife Greenstone belt is one of the major gold camps within Canada. Since its discovery, gold has played a crucial role to the development of the city of Yellowknife and the economy of the Northwest Territories. Gold mineralization within the Yellowknife Greenstone Belt is not confined to one type of lithology or structure, but rather extends across multiple formations, with multiple generations of mineralizing fluids. The orogenic gold deposits of the Yellowknife Greenstone Belt commonly occur in shear zones where numerous structures have varying degrees of mineralization. Due to the low concentrations of gold required to make a mine, assaying is commonly required to evaluate the potential of an exploration target. However, drilling prospective structures and sending samples into an assaying lab takes a significant amount of time and resources. Standard assaying methods are expensive and often offer limitations due to the nugget effect inherent to gold mineralization and the destructive nature of wet chemical analyses.
In this study we aim to identify elements that can act as geochemical indicators with concentrations high enough to be detected by portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) and determine whether there is a relationship between these indicators and mineralized structures with high gold grades. The ability of pXRF to provide a fast and accurate assessment of compositions depends on particle sizes and chemical homogeneities within various lithologies. Therefore, we have further tested the precision and accuracy of pXRF with regards to heterogeneous whole rock samples from six drill cores from various locations across the Yellowknife Greenstone Belt. The precision and accuracy of the instrument has been tested through the study of sample duplicates and comparison of pXRF results with standard assay data and ICP data from TerraX Minerals. Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) technology offers a unique opportunity to assist companies in speeding up the preliminary assessment of potentially mineralized structures and preform such analyses in a non-destructive fashion.