A study on the mineralogy and geochemistry of river estuarine sediments, Kerteh, Terengganu

Abstract

Eleven sediments samples were collected from the Kerteh river estuarine area on 27th June 2011. The samples were prepared for mineralogy, chemical constituents and sedimentological characteristics determination. Scanning Electron Microscope and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM - EDS) was used to detect the chemical constituents while the mineral contents in sediments were determined by using the X - Ray Diffractometer (XRD) machines. Generally, 0, Si and Al were the elements found to be dominant in the study area which indicates the area is highly siliceous (Si02). The East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia having granite as the dominant rock to the abundance of quartz in the study area. For the sedimentological characteristics, dry sieving was used and the result stated that the sediments were medium sand, poorly sorted, negative skewed and extremely leptokurtic. For the texture analysis, it clearly showed that the study area was mainly covered by coarse sediment.