Nigel J. F. Blamey Adjunct Professor of Geochemistry Dept of Earth & Environmental Science  New Mexico Tech 801 Leroy Place Socorro, NM 87801 Email: nblamey at nmt.edu Ph.D. Geology, New Mexico Tech (2001) Left: Nigel Blamey at Grimsell Pass, Switzerland

I am a geochemist who specialises in fluid inclusion applications to geothermal systems, hydrothermal ore deposits, and petroleum basins. The principle equipment available for my research includes a Linkham heating/freezing stage for microthermometry and a custom-built mass spectrometer system for fluid inclusion gas analysis. This unique system quantitatively analyses fluid inclusion volatiles including: H₂, He, CH₄, H₂O, N₂, O₂, H₂S, Ar, CO₂, SO₂, C₂-C₄ alkanes and alkenes, and benzene. Although much of the fluid inclusion gas analysis was pioneered by David Norman, it wasn't until 2000 when he and I developed the interpretation as an exploration tool for the geothermal industry. It is equally applicable to the study of many hydrothermal ore deposits. To date I have analysed samples from several geothermal systems, four gold settings (Carlin-type in Nevada, Witwatersrand, epithermal, and porphyry Cu-Au), epithermal Au-Ag, porphyry Cu and Mo, MVTs, black smokers, pegmatites, metamorphic veins, emeralds, iron ore, carbonatites, diagenetic carbonates, desert carbonates, speleothems, amber, Libyan desert glass, fulgurites, impact craters, meteorites, and man-made materials. Gas analysis is used to discriminate fluid sources (magmatic, meteoric, basinal), identify processes (boiling, condensational, mixing, equilibrium), constrain redox, correct isochors, apply gas geothermometry, and provide the gas concentrations for fluid-rock equilibria modeling.  Modeling of gold, silver and base metal solubility as well as mineral stability can be achieved.

I also specialise in fluorescence lifetime analysis of petroleum-bearing fluid inclusions (aka. HCFI or hydrocarbon-bearing fluid inclusions).  Although fluorescence lifetime is not new and is utilized in biomedical research, its application to petroleum fluid inclusions is a new development which I pioneered in collaboration with Alan Ryder at NUIG.  Unlike steady state fluid inclusion fluorescence, the fluorescence lifetime analysis is a quantitative non-destructive technique that is able to estimate API gravity, provide compositional information (alkane, aromatic and polar composition) in inclusions as small as 2 microns, discriminate and correlate sources, and recognize multicharge (see Blamey et al., 2009; Blamey and Ryder, 2009), even if several inclusion populations are hosted in the same grain (Blamey et al., 2007).

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