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Minerals Hub / Mineral Dossiers / Rutile

A radiating cluster of slender deep red prismatic crystals with finely striated faces, against a black ground.
Illustrative artwork: rutile, the high-grade natural titanium mineral, showing its characteristic slender crystals. A generic specimen, not material from this project. · Illustration · Osmond Hub
Assayed / quantified

Rutile

TiO₂ · oxide

Rutile is the titanium mineral that dominates Orión's heavy-mineral assemblage, outweighing ilmenite by roughly two to one or more in Osmond's description of the deposit.

Yields

→ titanium

Data status

Assayed / quantified

Class

oxide

Why it matters

As general mineralogy, not an Osmond figure, rutile is the naturally high-grade titanium dioxide mineral — running about 95% TiO₂ against ilmenite's 35–65% — which is why the balance between the two titanium minerals in an assemblage is worth reporting at all.

What Osmond has reported at Orión is a mass-balance estimate dated 19 February 2026: bulk channel samples returned 13.36–13.49% rutile, and the AV-01bis discovery interval is estimated at around 13.0% rutile. Those are grades for the channel samples and for that interval. Against the same 19 February 2026 basis, total heavy minerals in the bulk channel samples run 29.4–32.8%, with up to roughly 40% estimated in the AV-01bis interval. On that record Osmond describes Orión as rutile-dominant, with rutile outweighing ilmenite by roughly two to one or more.

One qualification travels with all of it. Every mineral percentage here, rutile's included, is a mass-balance estimate calculated from oxide assays rather than a directly measured mineral content.

Quantified in the bulk channel samples and estimated for the AV-01bis interval, both on a mass-balance basis; no concentrate grade, no recovery, and no deposit-wide grade.

Used for

  1. 01Pigment feedstock — titanium dioxide for paints, plastics and paper.
  2. 02Titanium metal — feed to sponge and metal production.
  3. 03Chloride-route feedstock — the premium feed for high-purity titanium products.

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