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Mineralogical data produced at SGS Minerals Services has been utilized in exploration deposit evaluation and development, feasibility testing, piloting and plant auditing, environmental planning, monitoring and remediation for companies around the world.
SGS Minerals Services has a team of applied and process mineralogists experienced in the evaluation of ore samples and metallurgical products created from a wide variety of commodities.
SGS Minerals Services’ professionals have a wide variety of mineralogical-analytical tools including Siemens D5000 X-ray diffractometers, scanning electron microscopes, electron microprobe capabilities, reflected and transmitted light microscopes, CLEMEX optical image analysis system, and QEMSCAN.
OPTICAL MICROSCOPY
Optical microscopy forms the basis for most mineralogical projects. SGS Minerals Services has a wide variety of research-quality reflected and transmitted light petrographic microscopes (Zeiss, Olympus and Nikon) including units with electronic cameras for image grabbing.
IMAGE ANALYSIS
SGS Minerals Services’ image analysis system utilizes Clemex Image Analysis software and Nikon petrographic and binocular microscopes. Image analysis provides particle size, shape, texture, and locked and liberated characteristics on unconsolidated material, polished mounts and drill core. Image analysis has very broad applications in gold, base metal and industrial minerals exploration and development projects.
QEMSCAN
QEMSCAN is the most powerful process mineralogical tool currently employed in the minerals industry. Major mining companies use data generated by QEMSCAN to make strategic decisions at the acquisition, exploration, feasibility and plant levels. Its flexible technology has been successfully employed for diverse commodities such as precious and base metals, mineral sands and industrial minerals.
The QEMSCAN can provide:
- Bulk modal analysis
- Particle maps
- Locked and liberated textural analysis
- Size-by-size, mineral-by-mineral chemical assay
- Trace mineral search and characterization capabilities
Viewing software allows the analysis of particle maps to determine:
- Grains and particle size
- Shape factor
- Particle type
- Proportion of mineral species present
- Chemical assay by particle or mineral species in each particle
- Mineralogy
- Degree of mineral liberation
- Isolate sub-sets of particles with the creation of particle characteristic screens
This technology can be used for:
- Geometallurgy
- Plant troubleshooting
- Quantifying the mineralogy and textural associations between ore and gangue.
- Calculate mineral and metal recoveries (i.e. gross metal values) to predict the response of the ore in a processing circuit when used in conjunction with reconnaissance style locked cycle or bench scale recovery tests and piloting.
- Prioritise mining blocks according to predicted metal recoveries and calculated metal values.
- Plant audits
- Trace Mineral searches
- X-ray diffraction (XRD)
XRD is used to determine bulk mineral assemblages typically in very fine-grained materials. It is the standard choice when analysing:
- Clay mineral assemblages
- Speciating fibrous minerals
- Determining respirable silica
- Ratio of monoclinic to hexagonal pyrrhotite.
SGS Minerals Services has a modern Siemens D5000 X-ray diffractometer with a 130,000 case PDF2 search library supported by EVA if Diffplus software for the calculation of semi-quantitative bulk modal data.
ELECTRON MICROPROBE
Our analytical capability includes compounds with compositions from sodium to uranium. Applications range from mineral exploration to process and industrial mineralogy
Projects at SGS Minerals Services typically include:
- Kimberlite indicator mineral analysis
- Provision of raw compositional data to support metal balancing in simple and complex sulphide, oxide and silicate ores
- Generation of X-ray maps to illustrate metal distribution within texturally and compositionally complex substrates at high magnification
MINERAL SEPARATION
Physical separations are performed by wet and dry screening, tabling and magnetic, electromagnetic, electrostatic, magnetohydrostatic and heavy media separation in support of:
- Diamond exploration
- Heavy mineral sands
- Porphyry Cu-Au studies
- Base metals (Ni, Cu, PGE) studies
- Hard rock and alluvial Au projects
- Industrial minerals
Using equipment such as:
- Wet screens (Kason)
- Rotap
- CARPCO high intensity wet and dry REE magnet
- CARPCO electrostatic separators
- Frantz electromagnetic separators
- Magstream separators
- Dense liquids (MI, LST, LMT) separators
SAMPLE PREPARATION
Petrographic and mineralogical analytical techniques need a well - equipped thin section, polished section and grain mounting laboratory.
At SGS Minerals Services, polished mounts can be prepared in addition to whole and halved drill cores.
Experienced technical staff produces thin and polished thin sections, polished sections, grain mounts and polished rock and drill core faces from a variety of solid and powdered materials including water sensitive samples such as Andean gold ores, salt and kimberlite. Turn-around time can be as little as two hours.
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