STUDY OF INDUCED POLARIZATION OF THE YASNOE GOLD OCCURRENCE (<i>Taimyr Peninsula</i>) ON THE BASIS OF FIELD AND LABORATORY RESEARCH RESULTS

As shown in recent decades, additional information about the structure and composition of rocks can be extracted by studying the transient induced polarization (TIP) in a large time interval from 1 ms to 10 s and more. In this study I present the comparison of study results of TIP of the Yasnoe gold occurrence, obtained via field and laboratory research on 37 rock samples. The samples differed in terms of composition, degree of variation of hydrothermal-metasomatic processes, type of electron-conducting minerals (pyrite and graphite), and features of their distribution in the rock. Mineralogical-petrographic studies and X-ray microtomography (μ-CT) were performed for representative samples of the collection. This made it possible to determine the features of the mineral composition and structure of the samples, as well as to quantitatively describe electron-conducting minerals (pyrite and graphite). The results of field and laboratory research of induced polarization (IP) were applied to obtain distribution of the relaxation times (DRT), which turned out to be close in shape for the same types of rocks. The μ-CT data and the Maxwell–Garnett model were used to calculate the DRT of the samples. In the case of certain samples, there was good agreement between the DRT obtained using the results of IP and μ-CT laboratory measurements. In the case of other samples, obtaining a satisfactory agreement between DRT required making assumptions that some pyrite inclusions were passivated or had a flattened shape. There were samples for which no agreement between DRT could be established. This contradiction was explained by the poor applicability of granular models for well-cemented rocks of low porosity. I concluded that there is a need to develop a capillary model of IP of rocks with electron-conducting mineral inclusions, which accounts for the structural features of low-porosity capillary media.