Industrial Raw Material Screening - Development of Cost-beneficial Screening Approach to Validate Clay Extraction Zones

The Capitol Region of Denmark is in the process of mapping the industrial raw materials potential within northeastern Denmark. Raw industrial materials in the region consist primarily of sands and gravels and meltwater clays used for brick production. There are several areas that have been registered by landowners as having rights to meltwater clay deposits, however, there is not ground truth or surveys to verify these zones contain meltwater clays of value for industrial extraction. Due to the many extraction right zones existing, an approach that would verify the presence of industrial use meltwater clays in a cost-beneficial manner was desired. The project had the following three phases: Phase 1: Collection, review and evaluation of existing data and conceptualisation of the geological conditions. Based on the evaluation the screening approach with geophysical methods was determined; Phase 2: Geophysical screening; Phase 3: Validation of clay deposits and volume estimation. The results from one case study are presented. The results indicated that geophysical screening with GEM2 and multi-electrode profiling with follow up drilling was able to delineate zones where meltwater clay was present. The cost-benefit model determined from this project will be adopted for screening of further raw material sites.