APPLIED MINERALOGY/GEOMETALLURGY ANALYSES

Applied Mineralogy provides the following key information that plays important roles in planning the exploration, mining and ore processing stages of a project:

  • Modal Mineralogy: Identification and quantification of the major, minor and trace minerals.
  • Particle and Grain Analyses: A quantitative analyses for studying the size distribution, association, locking and liberation of the target minerals.
  • Trace Mineral Search: Analyses forminerals in trace quantities (such as precious metals)whether their appearance in the ore rock can be characterized. This can also be used for recovery optimization.
  • Field Scan Mapping: Produces a high-resolution mineral map of the complete section, including polished thin-sections previously used for petrography. This is very useful for studying the in-situ appearance of minerals and alteration.
  • Petrography Analysis: A full rock description by using transmitted/reflective light microscopy on polished thin-sections.

Deliverable Services by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD)

XRD and QXRD analysis is used for the following applications; identification and quantification of crystalline minerals, quantification of amorphous content, clay speciation analysis on the separated fine grain size fraction, cluster analysis on large sample sets, and GMP certified pharmaceutical testing on raw material, API, clinical material, and finished products.

  • Mineral Identification (semi-quantitative): Minerals are identified and their amounts determined using the Rietveld method
  • Mineral Identification (quantitative): Minerals are identified and their amounts are determined using the Rietveld method (Corundum is added to the sample as an internal standard in order to determine the amount of X-ray amorphous material)
  • Mineral Identification (qualitative): Minerals are identified; however, their amounts are not determined
  • Clay Speciation
  • XRD Cluster Analysis: Statistical tool that groups XRD patterns into clusters based on the similarity of their peak and profile information, and it can be used to rapidly group large data sets into smaller clusters with more similar mineralogy.

For mining and exploration, this analysis can help with:

  • Highlighting existing changes in mineralogy within a deposit
  • Determining mineralogical variability within metallurgical processing samples that could inform methodology.
  • Assist with Ore grade control
  • Creating a multidimensional compositional ore deposit maps or alteration maps