Unity – Instant Chemical Imaging

Unity – Instant Chemical Imaging

Petrolab is delighted to install the UK’s first commercial detector for instant chemical imaging Last year Oxford Instruments became the first company to develop an imaging detector that combines Backscattered Electron and X-ray imaging in a single technique – BEX. This new detector, named “Unity”, will enable Petrolab to collect visual and compositional sample analysis simultaneously in the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). In practice this means Petrolab can now locate potential areas of interest rapidly, a requirement that is particularly important when handling samples with low concentrations of a target element (e.g. gold in exploration samples, or arsenic in mine waste) or where forensic investigation of a problem (e.g. internal sulphate attack) requires searching a large area for a potentially incipient expression of the problem. The new process offers a significantly quicker turnaround on elemental and area of interest location than traditional mapping, which acquires black-and-white electron images based on the backscattered electron signals, with subsequent X-ray analysis used to determine chemical composition. With the Unity detector and innovative BEX technique, BSE and X-ray signals are captured simultaneously, allowing users to instantly observe...
Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Many congratulations are due to one of Petrolab’s Project mineralogists for their recent achievement. Mariola Zajac, after 6 years of varied project experience at Petrolab, has deservedly been accredited by The Geological Society as a Chartered Geologist (CGeol)....
IOM3 – 42nd Annual Cement and Concrete Conference

IOM3 – 42nd Annual Cement and Concrete Conference

Next week Bradley Staniforth will be attending the 42nd Annual Cement and Concrete conference in London presenting two pieces of work. The first is the culmination of some accelerated weathering tests of phyllite concrete. Concrete made from phyllite has been associated with serious degradation within the County of Donegal affecting thousands for properties. However, there are some outstanding questions related to degradation mechanisms. The completion of these tests and petrographic examination of the final cores (see e.g. below) presents a very important clarification on the long-term stability of the cores, showing as it does that these would not be classed as mortgageable concrete block by the RICS standard.   More can be read about this work here The second piece of work is a poster on regulation, risk and conveyancing in Irish defective concrete. This covers the primary risk window (see below) for when properties were built containing deleterious concrete, how that defective concrete relates to the key EN12620 guidelines on total sulphur values in different contexts, and then implications for conveyancing. More can be read about this work here If...
Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated concrete (RAAC) – Basic composition & petrography

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated concrete (RAAC) – Basic composition & petrography

From Bradley E. Staniforth, CEng The recent publishing of the “Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete: guidance for responsible bodies and education settings with confirmed RAAC” document [1] by the Department for Education is resulting in the potential closure of around 150 schools across England due to potential structural safety concerns. This document in particular has been prompted by heightened concerns following an in situ failure of particular RAAC elements previously thought to be at low risk of deterioration.  Additional research by an NHS commissioned research project through Loughborough university (To which Petrolab contributed some petrographic findings) and risk factor guidance from the IStructE’s RAAC study group [2] have also acted to provide up-to-date guidance and understanding of the associated risks. However failures related to RAAC materials have been identified and investigated as early as the 1990’s in the UK. Production of RAAC materials was halted in the 1990’s following a series of high profile structural failures prompting earlier research and investigation by the BRE [3] and later SCOSS [4]. What is the composition of RAAC ?  Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) was...
Deep Digital Cornwall – Exciting Primary Results

Deep Digital Cornwall – Exciting Primary Results

Our project with Deep Digital Cornwall (DDC) on Digitisation & Automation of Optical Petrography reaches the end of ERDF funding this month, and we would like to share its main outcomes. The first has been setup of an automated ZEISS AxioImager optical microscope and integrating its large area scanning capability into our standard petrographic workflows. All in-house concrete sections are now scanned in three light paths (PPL – plane polarised light, XPL – cross polarised light and EPO – episcopic flourescence). The images, although incredible to view, really make their positive impact on company productivity because of the development of a bespoke Java based image viewing tool, created by our DDC project lead, Laura Carter-Greaves. The Petrolab View (PLV) tool allows images to be loaded and viewed on any laptop or desktop in the office or even remotely. This allows for more flexible working opportunities and also breaks the bottleneck of requiring additional petrographic microscopes and all their ancillary parts as our petrography team builds. Remote access also allows for greater collaboration among colleagues, clients and, potentially, external consultants. PLV’s...