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Minerals Hub / Mineral Dossiers / Ilmenite

A blocky black crystal with bright angular cleavage faces and a metallic sheen, on a dark grey ground.
Illustrative artwork: ilmenite, an iron-titanium oxide, showing its metallic lustre. A generic specimen, not material from this project. · Illustration · Osmond Hub
Assayed / quantified

Ilmenite

Fe²⁺TiO₃ · oxide

Ilmenite is the second titanium mineral at Orión — present in the bulk channel samples, but the smaller of the two in an assemblage Osmond describes as rutile-dominant.

Yields

→ titanium

Data status

Assayed / quantified

Class

oxide

Why it matters

As general mineralogy, not an Osmond figure, ilmenite carries markedly less titanium dioxide than rutile does — about 35–65% TiO₂ against natural rutile's roughly 95% — so which of the two minerals dominates an assemblage matters more than the combined titanium content on its own.

At Orión the balance falls the way it does. On a mass-balance basis dated 19 February 2026, bulk channel samples returned 4.82–6.19% ilmenite, the smaller titanium mineral in a rutile-dominant assemblage; Osmond describes rutile as outweighing ilmenite by roughly two to one or more. Those are grades for the channel samples. The same 19 February 2026 samples carry total heavy minerals of 29.4–32.8%, with up to roughly 40% estimated in the AV-01bis interval.

One qualification travels with the number. Like every mineral percentage in the reported assemblage, the ilmenite figure is a mass-balance estimate calculated from oxide assays rather than a directly measured mineral content.

Quantified in the bulk channel samples on a mass-balance basis only; no concentrate grade, no recovery, and no deposit-wide grade.

Used for

  1. 01TiO₂ pigment — the white in paint, plastics and paper.
  2. 02Sulfate-route feedstock — the process that takes lower-grade titanium minerals directly.
  3. 03Synthetic rutile — upgraded ilmenite as a higher-titanium feed.

Latest on Ilmenite

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