Visualization of the incremental magma growth related to porphyry copper deposits obtained with numerical modeling

Porphyry copper deposits provide most of the world’s, half its molybdenum reserves and are resources for Zn, Pb, Au, and Ag. The porphyry mineralization is inferred to form on time scales between 50 and 100kyrs whereby the mineralization forming magma chamber is generally built up by multiple intrusive events. The overall source magmatic system can be active for several millions of years. We used the Complex System Modeling Platform (CSMP++) to simultaneously model sill injection, heat transfer, the release of metal-bearing magmatic fluids, the multi-phase flow of saline hydrothermal fluids, and dynamic permeability variations with a continuum porous medium approach. Our modeling studies the volumetric injection rate and its impact on the growth of the magma chamber and the Cu-ore shell but also investigates the influence of hydrothermal convection and fluid release. The setup of each modeling run is changed slightly, either by changing the influx rate, changing the geometry of the magma chamber, or changing the location of fluid release. CSMP was modified to produce vtk and vtu files every 100 years which were read into the Paraview 4.3.1 software to perform the post-processing (including the calculation of the copper enrichment factor and the pore fluid factor). Paraview was then used to produce the displayed videos.

The over-riding goal of the DFG priority programm 2238 - DOME (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/spp2238/) is to find solutions to fundamental questions of element transport and mineralization in heterogeneous chemical systems that are complex, dynamic and highly transient. The topic of ore genesis has been studied for a long time from a combined field/laboratory perspective and also experimentally in simplified systems, but rarely have these techniques been integrated in a coordinated way with the third perspective from numerical process modeling. The originality and innovation potential of this priority program lies in the coordination of empirical field-related studies that define the geological/mineralogical framework of natural ore systems with experimental work and numerical models that provide a quantitative understanding of the processes involved.