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Driving Mechanisms and Their Relative Importance in Focusing Hydrothermal Fluid Flow in the Chanziping Ore District, South China

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Abstract

Numerical simulations were performed to examine the driving mechanisms and their relative dominance in concentrating hydrothermal ore-forming fluid flow in the Chanziping ore district, South China. A numerical scheme was employed to provide realistic strain-dependent porosity and permeability during tectonic deformation. The results indicate that the buoyancy resultant from typical geothermal gradients alone during tectonically quiescent periods could not focus ore-forming fluids to the trap area for U precipitation. The extensional tectonic deformation in the late Yanshanian-early Himalayan period caused a broad downwelling flow in the red sandstone, channeling downwards along the regional fault to mix with the basement-derived upwelling reducing fluid driven by the buoyancy force. This leads to the ore genesis in the black shale below the fracture zone. The compressive deformation in the Indo-Chinese epoch would have essentially squeezed the basinal fluid and basal brine out of the basin, and hence would have been unfavorable for the formation of the Chanziping deposit. It was also observed that tectonic deformation always overwhelms the effect of buoyancy in driving hydrothermal flow, even if an extension or shortening of as little as 1% is applied.

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Data Availability

Numerical computation was conducted by using the commercial software package FLAC8.1. Details of the governing equations that describe the physical processes of fluid flow, heat transport and mechanical deformation, and the numerical method that implements the coupling of these processes can be found in FLAC8.1’s User Manual (Itasca, 2021). All data used in this research are tabulated in Table 1. No new data were generated or analyzed in support of this research.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through a Discovery Grant (grant no. RGPIN-2016-04965) to Jianwen Yang. Constructive reviews and comments from two anonymous reviewers greatly improved the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Guilin University of Technology, Guangxi, 541004, China

    Hua Lin

  2. College of Material Science and Engineering, Guilin University of Technology, Guangxi, 541004, China

    Xu Xu

  3. School of the Environment, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, N9B 3P4, Canada

    Jianwen Yang

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  1. Hua Lin
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Correspondence to Jianwen Yang.

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Lin, H., Xu, X. & Yang, J. Driving Mechanisms and Their Relative Importance in Focusing Hydrothermal Fluid Flow in the Chanziping Ore District, South China. Nat Resour Res 32, 117–128 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11053-022-10136-6

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