Emergences of New Technology for Ultrafast Automated Mineral Phase Identification and Quantitative Analysis Using the CORIOSITY Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) System

Abstract

Geochemical and mineralogical characterization studies play an important role in the definition of mineral deposits. Each mineral system has a unique set of minerals with different chemical makeup and physical properties. Platinum-group elements (PGEs), for example, are scarce resources with many applications. The optimization of extraction process efficiency is therefore crucial to prevent resource shortage and increased bulk prices. To improve the mineral liberation process, high throughput sensors must be added alongside the production line as part of fast process analysis implementation. Current analytical methods are either ineffective to assess PGE content, or unusable in the conditions of the processing facilities. This article shows how Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) technology, developed by ELEMISSION Inc, can circumvent these drawbacks by enabling automated, ultra-fast, and precise quantitative mineral analyses in any working environment. The drill core samples that were used in this study were collected at the Stillwater platinum group element mine in the United States. The data used for the mineralogical database was validated using the TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyzer (TIMA) instrument.

Analyses of Li-Rich Minerals Using Handheld LIBS Tool

“…In fact, by avoiding lab interpretation after the remote sensing work and the ground-truthing, the duration of exploration processes could be considerably shortened. This would require near real-time data processing based on chemometrics and artificial intelligence [44,45]. One previous data paper reported the acquisition of VNIR and SWIR spectra in the field from outcrops and various reference minerals [46] within the same project.…”

Chemical and Mineralogical Mapping of Platinum‐Group Element Ore Samples Using Laser‐Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy and Micro‐X‐Ray Fluorescence

“…Recently, a supervised machine learning algorithm has been integrated into ELEdit. This new feature made it possible to identify and quantify the mineral phase distribution on the surface of PGE ore samples (Rifai et al 2020). As mentioned above, the mineral database was built and validated using TIMA-X analyses of samples coming from a different mine than those used in the present study.…”

“…2019, Rifai et al . 2020). However, LIBS is increasingly gaining ground in the mining industry due to its speed and the wide range of elements that can be detected (Khajehzadeh and Kauppinen 2015, Harmon et al .…”

“…Rifai et al . (2020) built and validated a LIBS mineral database for platinum‐group elements (PGE) bearing rocks using assay data from TIMA‐X (TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyzer), a SEM‐EDS enabling automated identification and mapping of the mineralogy of small size samples (Hrstka et al . 2018).…”

“…The LIBS database established in previous work (Rifai et al . 2020), using PGE bearing rocks coming from the Stillwater mine (Montana, USA) plus two additional entries taken from LDI samples were applied to the studied LDI samples.…”