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Use of drones in acquiring B-field total-field electromagnetic data for mineral exploration

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Abstract

The mining town of Aggeneys is situated in a world-class polymetallic base metal district. The Black Mountain Mining Complex (BMC), located in the Northern Cape, South Africa, contains six known orebodies with more than 25.5 Mt contained metal in resources and reserves. Currently, three of the six known orebodies are actively mined. The Big Syncline East prospect is situated directly east of the massive Big Syncline mineral resource of > 150 Mt of open pit and underground resources. Big Syncline is one of the six declared resources at BMC. Recent high-power super conducting quantum interference device transient EM identified a large 3500-Siemens conductor at depths greater than 400 m. Initial follow-up drilling confirmed the presence of mineralized sulfides. A follow-up drone-based magnetic survey was flown, primarily to improve on the poor-quality, high-ground clearance magnetic data recorded with a fixed-wing aeromagnetic system, but also to trial a novel hybrid ground and drone total-field transient EM survey over the extreme topography encountered in the area. Results are very encouraging and now pave the way for more routine implementation of hybrid ground-drone total-field transient EM applications, where a large transmitting loop on the surface is surveyed by a relative fast-moving drone-carried fast-sampling total-field magnetometer.

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Acknowledgements

Firstly, Vedanta Zinc International management are thanked for their continued support for innovation and digitalization across the group and for permission to publish these results.

Special thanks go to AeroPhysX who executed the drone magnetic and EM survey at no cost to VZI and was closely involved in developing the processing code. The second author is acknowledged for initially proposing the idea of acquiring TFTEM data with the MagArrow™ sensor and Mr. Trevor Grace (MD AeroPhysX) for enabling this trial survey.

Geometrics is acknowledged for the additional input to the graph in Fig. 1 and the continued support into optimizing the MagArrow™ for novel geophysical applications requiring increased sensitivity.

The authors would like to thank BGR (Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, Germany) for the accurate Lidar survey over Big Syncline that was critical for the low-level drone drape survey. The high-quality false-color hyperspectral image in Fig. 3 was kindly produced and made available by the BGR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vedanta Zinc International, Johannesburg, South Africa

    J. P. Smit & M. O. Schaefer

  2. AeroPhysX, Pretoria, South Africa

    E. H. Stettler

  3. Vedanta Zinc International, Aggeneys, South Africa

    A. B. W. Price

  4. BGR, Hannover, Germany

    M. C. Schodlok

  5. Geometrics Inc., San Jose, CA, USA

    R. Zhang

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  1. J. P. Smit
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  2. E. H. Stettler
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  3. A. B. W. Price
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  4. M. O. Schaefer
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  5. M. C. Schodlok
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  6. R. Zhang
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Correspondence to J. P. Smit.

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The work was funded in full by Vedanta Zinc International and AeroPhysX. Data and code generated during this study is proprietary to Vedanta Zinc International and AeroPhysX.

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Smit, J.P., Stettler, E.H., Price, A.B.W. et al. Use of drones in acquiring B-field total-field electromagnetic data for mineral exploration. Miner Econ 35, 455–465 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13563-021-00292-1

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