The acoustic decrepitation method heats a small monomineralic sample and counts pressure impulses as the inclusions burst when they develop high internal pressures. For aqueous fluids, the decrepitation temperature is correlated with the homogenisation temperature, but gas rich fluids give a distinct and characteristic low temperature decrepitation peak which can be used to recognize gas rich fluid inclusions. This information is useful in exploration for Au deposits, which are frequently associated with CO2 rich and sometimes CH4 rich fluids.This distinctive decrepitation occurs because the CO2 rich inclusion fluids expand according to the gas law and develop internal pressures high enough to burst the host mineral grain at temperatures well below their homogenisation temperatures. In contrast, aqueous fluids condense to a liquid and vapour phase during post-entrapment cooling. Upon subsequent heating their internal pressures do not increase significantly until after homogenisation to a single phase occurs and hence they do not decrepitate "prematurely" as gas rich inclusions do.This behaviour is usually regarded as an annoyance in conventional microthermometric homogenisation studies, but can readily be used as an exploration aid to find mineralisation deposited from such gas rich fluids. Decrepitation results on samples from Cowra Ck, NSW, Australia, which have also been microthermometrically measured for CO2 content, show that amounts of less than 5 mole % CO2are easily distinguished by decrepitation and amounts as low as 1 mole % CO2 may be determinable.Examples of the use of acoustic decrepitation in the study of 6 gold mines in the Shandong and Hebei provinces of China are discussed.
展开▼
