Potash in salt extruded at Sar Pohl diapir, Southern Iran

Recent progress in the search for potassium salts in Iran is outlined. After reviewing how most potassium ores form by the evaporation of seawater ± hydrothermal brines, we focus on how most ores are deformed within salt diapirs. We summarise the history of the 150 or so diapirs of Hormoz salt emergent in the Zagros Mountains of Iran and then consider in detail the nature of potash at Sar Pohl, 60 km west of Bandar Abbas. These deposits are unique in that they occur in salt that extruded sub-aerially and spread over the surrounding ground surface via gravity-driven collapse. Mapping and drilling of the complex structural geology of Sar Pohl found the potash beds to be dispersed in distal salt but concentrated in piles of recumbent folds with axes circumferential to the mountain over lows in the vent rim. lents of the curtain folds surviving in the stems of German diapirs presumably still exist beneath Sar Pohl and would be safer to mine than the recumbent folds in this soluble mountain. However, it should be possible to continuously pump water onto the exposed salt and guide the resulting brines through evaporation ponds and then a crystallization plant on the adjacent plains. This approach would accelerate natural degradation processes but harvest potash currently draining into the gulf.