Author(s)

Md. Ibrahim Khalil^1*, Md. Nazrul Islam Khan², Md. Zafrul Kabir¹, Ratan Kumar Majumder¹, Md. Idris Ali³, Debasish Paul³, Syed Mohammad Azharul Islam⁴

¹Nuclear Minerals Unit, Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
²Material Science Division, Atomic Energy Center, Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
³Health Physics and Radioactive Waste Management Unit, Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
⁴Department of Physics, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Sands along Brahmaputra River of Bangladesh have long been considered to be a source of heavy minerals (HMs) since it traversed a long way through various terrains. An attempt has been made under this research work to determine the kinds and amounts of heavy minerals in the sands sourced from the river system. Samples from 14 locations along Brahmaputra River covering 30 km distance from upstream to downstream of the river are found to contain different heavy minerals concentration with a range of 7.92 - 25.16 weight% with the remaining of the sample comprising silicate and aluminosilicates. Mineral characterization from peak positions in diffractogram of X-ray Diffraction (XRD) evaluate quartz, feldspar and mica are major categories light mineral while rutile, magnetite, illmenite, zircon, monazite, garnet, uranium arsenide and uranium fluoride are the major types heavy minerals. Ilmenite and rutile are main contributors of total heavy mineral (THM). Titanium bearing minerals ilmenite and rutile contributes 26.22% - 31.01% and 14.57% - 23.50% of THM. In the present study area, most of the sands are found to be fine and medium grained as obtained from the particle sizes analysis using 18- to 230-mesh.

Heavy Minerals, River, Sand, Bangladesh

Khalil, M. , Khan, M. , Kabir, M. , Majumder, R. , Ali, M. , Paul, D. and Islam, S. (2016) Heavy Minerals in Sands along Brahmaputra (Jamuna) River of Bangladesh. International Journal of Geosciences, 7, 47-52. doi: 10.4236/ijg.2016.71005.