Quantitative analysis of iron sand mineral content from the south coast of Cidaun, West Java using rietveld refinement method

TL;DR

This study quantitatively analyzes the mineral content of iron sand from Cidaun, West Java, using XRD and Rietveld refinement, revealing significant variations in magnetite content between raw and processed samples.

Contribution

It applies Rietveld refinement to quantify magnetite content in Indonesian iron sand, providing detailed mineral composition data for resource assessment.

Findings

Raw sand contains 24.27% magnetite.

Processed concentrate contains 61.98% magnetite.

Method demonstrates effective mineral quantification in natural sands.

Abstract

Iron sand is one of the abundant natural resources in Indonesia, especially on the south coast of Cidaun; West Java which is the basic material for building and metal industry. Iron mineral content is generally metal oxide such as magnetite, hematite and silica/quartz. Sand with iron content used in this study is derived from beach sand Desa Kertajadi, Kecamatan Cidaun, Kabupaten Cianjur, Jawa Barat. Then mass of 2 kg sand was separated using a magnetic separator in order to obtain magnetic and nonmagnetic mineral content. After nine rounds of separation takes two different types of samples that are no separation sand (TS) sample and concentrate in the third separation (S3) sample. The sample is then examined by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) measurement and analyzed quantitatively using MAUD software to determine the content of Fe3O4 (magnetite) by using the Rietveld refinement method from XRD data. As the analysis result, the magnetite content contained in iron sand is counted quantitatively for each different sample. For iron sand samples (TS) yielding a 24.27 percent of magnetite and a third concentrate separation sample (S3) yields 61.98 percent.