High-purity quartz is a rare raw material used in a wide range of technologically important quartz-glass applications, including solar-energy technologies, fibreoptics and computer chip manufacture for artificial intelligence. Although the mineralogy, geochemistry and formation processes of quartz are well documented, current knowledge is insufficient to identify economically viable high-purity quartz deposits or predict their processing performance.
Impurity removal, yield and processing behaviour are strongly influenced by the type and spatial distribution of inclusions and lattice-bound impurities. However, predictive relationships that can be applied across different deposits have not yet been established. While advanced raw material characterisation techniques are individually well developed, their integration into scalable workflows that can guide processing decisions remainslargely unexplored.
The goal of PureQis to establish geological fingerprints of high-purity quartz mineralised systems at different scales in order to describe and quantify the previously unknown properties and formation processes of such quartz deposits. To establish these fingerprints, a wide range of analytical methods will be applied for raw-material characterisation, from meter-scale down to micrometre scale.
The resulting fingerprints will be used to guide and optimise tailored processing routes, including crushing, sorting and beneficiation techniques, in order to improve recovery, reduce waste and open up new markets by expanding the product range. The identified geological fingerprints will be integrated into a predictive workflow that links the geological-mineralogical features to processing responses and industrial performance. This workflow will connect identified material characteristics with their behaviour during processing and their impact on final product performance. The results will also provide new insights into the origin and geological evolution of these deposits and support the development of a mineral-systems framework for the more efficient identification of new deposits in the project’s target areas.
