by Chris Brough | Jul 16, 2019 | Petrolab News
Later this month our office manager, Aileen Barwell along with friends Wayne, Alessandro and Dot, will be attempting to ride from London to Rome to raise money for two charities, the first being The Royal British Legion, specifically for their projects supporting Admiral Nurses who work with people (and their families who are often more affected) with Alzheimers, which is a disease that took Wayne’s father at an early age. The second charity they are supporting is Demelza House, which is a hospice that provides respite care and end of life care for children with severe illnesses and life-limiting conditions. Petrolab is delighted to be one of the many companies sponsoring the venture which will be gruelling and challenging in its own right. Over the course of 17 days (26th of July – 13th of August), they will cover 1700 miles averaging 80-90 miles a day for most of the journey, including a punishing 45 miles a day through the Alps. In the course of the journey, they’ll ascend and descend the equivalent of 1.5 times the height of Mt Everest. We are...
by John Fletcher | Jun 13, 2019 | Petrolab News
Petrolab were delighted to welcome a delegation of mining industry visitors from Russia and Kazakhstan yesterday. Petrolab Director, James Strongman gave a presentation on the value of mineralogy in both exploration and operational settings and how Petrolab is utilising recent advances in automated mineralogy and correlative workflows to join with traditional optical microscopy and other complementary micro-investigative techniques such as...
by Chris Brough | May 15, 2019 | Petrolab News
The R500 Isortoq project in South-West Greenland contains two titanomagnetite-rich troctolite veins striking 15 km with an inferred resource of 70 Mt and potential products of Fe, Ti and V. As with many modern exploration assessments there is a need to quantify the mineral proportions of the ore, along with the key mineral carriers of the target elements. For any complex ore where the target elements are hosted at different concentrations, in different minerals, this process of characterisation usually necessitates using multiple techniques. Generally, the concentrations of vanadium in vanadiferous titanomagnetite deposits are low (0.3 – 1.9 %V2O5) and mostly contained as solid-solution with vanadiferous titanomagnetite. It is normally recovered as a co-product with major elements Fe and Ti, which themselves may be hosted by multiple other phases. As such the assessment of mineralogy particularly benefits from combining techniques to resolve the overall mineralogy, trace element and major element deportment and liberation characteristics (Figure 1). Figure 1: Comprehensive Mineralogical Characterisation In isolation, any one of these techniques would be insufficient. Although deductions may be made, assays on their own...
by Chris Brough | Nov 1, 2018 | Petrolab News
Petrolab are proud sponsors of Process Mineralogy 2018 in Cape Town this month and have the privilege of presenting both at a pre-conference workshop and within the main conference. The workshop is organised by Zeiss microscopy, focussed on “New developments in Automated Mineral Analysis” and has gathered together experts from Grinding Solutions, Zeiss Microscopy, Hippo Geoscience, Mintek, Geological Survey of Finland and the Centre for Minerals Research. The workshop is free to attend and promises to be an excellent overview of the state of the art, along with driving towards the next generation requirements of the technology, particularly as it relates to addressing the currently existing challenges in industry and academia. Within the workshop itself James Strongman, Petrolab’s director, will be presenting on “Maximising the value of mineralogy, a staple rather than luxury in the Metallurgists’ diet”. The full Workshop Agenda can be found here, and is also reproduced below. The conference presentation later in the week is the first output to come from the ATSE grant-funded work, in conjunction with the University of Tasmania into developing the use of automated mineralogy with kinetic tests. For this presentation...
by Chris Brough | Oct 15, 2018 | Petrolab News
Last week saw the visit of Bruker to fit our second EDS detector (the xFlash 6|60) and upgrade the analytical software. The additional detector allows Petrolab to acquire spectra simultaneously on two detectors reducing the time required to reach an acceptable level of counts for mineral identification. There are further added benefits in improving edge effect analysis and allowing more versatile analysis options on samples with topography. Finally, the software upgrade from Esprit 1.9 to 2.1 for the Bruker software brings added power and utility for element mapping and quantification. All-in-all the upgrades are an exciting development for Petrolab allowing us to increase sample throughput, analyse a wider range of sample morphologies and with greater analytical versatility on point & shoot job requirements. ...
by Chris Brough | Jul 5, 2018 | Petrolab News
Petrolab are delighted to welcome Libby Rose. Libby has a First-Class Honours degree in Geology and was awarded a MSc with Distinction in Mining Geology at Camborne School of Mines in 2017. She went on to complete an internship at CSIRO on their CMR Discovery Internship Program in Perth, WA. Here she studied the hyperspectral infrared spectral data from multiple komatiite drill holes hosting nickel, and then carried out and compared Tornado x-ray fluorescence element mapping, scanning electron microscopy, and more detailed infrared microscopy....
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