Mineral analysis of an artificial pond sediment samples from the Western Cape Province, South Africa.

Abstract

Mineralogical characterization was carried out to determine the major and minor constituent minerals present in sediment samples collected from five different locations at the Western Cape artificial pond sediment, South Africa by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and X-ray diffractometry (XRD) techniques. The minerals were identified with the available literature from the IR absorption band of the locations of different peaks. The FT-IR technique was highly useful in identifying different minerals in sediments. The XRD analysis revealed that the minerals of artificial pond sediments in Western Cape are predominantly composed of quartz while carrolite was present in location one. The presence of pyrite could also suggest anoxia, which in turn will imply differential Fe(Iron) levels in the sediment as a function of the degree of anoxia in the sediment.