Mineral content in beach sand

The sand at Cox's Bazar beach and surrounding areas is rich in heavy-metal mineral content.^[22] The heavy minerals of Cox's Bazar beach sands are dominated by hornblende, garnet, epidote, ilmenites (both unaltered and altered) with magnetite, rutile, pyrite and some hydroxides.^[23] Cox's Bazar beach alone is believed to have a deposit of 5.119 Mt of minerals @ 0.04% mon, while nearby Enani beach is expected to have another deposit of 0.729 Mt. of minerals @ 0.13% mon.^[22] Surrounding islands of Maheshkhali, Kutubdia and Nijhum Deep as well as mainland beach in Teknaf area are also believed to have similar large deposits.^[22] The total deposit in these locations is about 20.5 million tons of raw sand, which contains 4.4 million tons of heavy minerals (sp gr > 2.9).^[8]