ESTUDO COMPARATIVO ENTRE OS MINÉRIOS DA MINA BATEIAS E DE OUTRAS MINAS DA REGIÃO DE CAMPO ALEGRE (SANTA CATARINA)

Abstract

Bateias (Santa Catarina - Brazil) is the largest mine of ceramic smectitic raw material in operation in southern Brazil. It is located among volcano-sedimentary rocks from Campo Alegre Basin, dated 570±30 Ma. The region contains dacitic and basaltic tuffs and lavas that, after a complex evolving process, were outcroped, zeolitized and then argilized, generating yellow (dacitic) and red (basaltic ) ores. Both are high silica and have illite-smectite interstratified clay-minerals. These ore differs from kaolinitic and illitic ores from the majority of Campo Alegre region mines. Factors that generated ores from tuffs an lavas started with zeolitization, occurred inside phreatic zone, followed by weathering related argilization, after surface lowering due to erosion. This process evolved with increasing of rock volumes, decreasing of calcium and increasing of sodium grades (zeolitization phase). Then, argilization has increased rock volumes and lixiviated all chemical elements, excepted iron and manganese, that were residually concentrated on surface