Identification of suitable garnet rich metamorphic rocks and development of a methodology for manufactured garnet sand

Abstract

Garnet has huge demand in worldwide at present. In Sri Lanka, there are few garnet mineral deposits, as beach and river sand. But rocks having considerable amount of garnet as a minor mineral are common in metamorphic terrain of Sri Lanka. The beach garnet sand deposits in coastal zone are suitable for industrial uses, but cannot be mined due to environmental problems. Thus the next possibility is manufacturing garnet sand from garnet bearing rocks. The research was carried out to identify high percentage garnet bearing rocks and development of a methodology to recover garnet sand for industrial uses. After identifying* the potential areas using Geological maps, field visits were carried out for verification and sampling. Garnet separation techniques were studied and most effective techniques was used and calculates the percentages of garnet in the rock. Separation was done at laboratory level to discover the most effective method for recovering garnet from the rocks. KDESH Pvt Ltd, quarry site at Neboda had highest percentage (19%) of recoverable garnet and the rock can be recommended for use in manufactured garnet.