Geochemistry

Geometallurgy: Comminution

February 6, 2024

Comminution is simply the size reduction of particles, and its purpose is to liberate valuable minerals from waste prior to concentration. The product is a mixture of particles that contain the valuable mineral (i.e., ore), gangue minerals (i.e., the commercially…

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Geometallurgy: Texture

January 23, 2024

A key aspect of geometallurgy is understanding what is the relationship of the mineral(s) of interest to all other minerals? What is texture? The characterization of mineral texture is a major concern for process mineralogists, as liberation characteristics of ore…

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Geometallurgy: Deportment

November 6, 2023

More than anything when I first heard about deportment, I liked the word, but I knew nothing about it. Therefore, my natural next step was to ask questions, read some papers, and generally learn more about it. The first thing…

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Geometallurgy: Penalties and Credits

October 24, 2023

Blog miniseries along common themes are the best! Through the end of 2023 we are going to dive into geometallurgy from a geochemistry-adjacent perspective (keeping it simple, keeping it relevant, and hoping every geoscientist learns one small thing per blog).…

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A series of steps with different designs on them.

Orientation Survey: pXRF

January 25, 2023

pXRF has many applications both within and outside of mining and mineral exploration. In no industry has a vendor ever told a client to take the pXRF, point, shoot, and voilà – you now have a robust dataset that is…

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A table of elements with the names and properties.

Orientation Surveys: Rocks

January 19, 2023

Perhaps a bit unconventional for these blog posts, but I want this to revolve front and center around this amazing resource I found from ALS Labs in the depths of my hard drive… a periodic table of the elements that…

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A group of people standing in the middle of an open field.

Orientation Study: Residual Soil Geochemistry

January 11, 2023

As discussed in our first installment, orientation studies should enable the selection of optimum field, laboratory and interpretation procedures. Ideally, these procedures should allow for the clear resolution of significant anomalous patterns, with as little overlap as possible between anomalous…

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A pyramid with the following steps : data, sample preparation and analysis ; sampling, program design ; and orientation survey.

January: A Month of Orientation Surveys

January 4, 2023

Orientation survey. Of course you *should* know what this term means… you think to yourself… Stop googling for half baked answers and stay tuned this January to our blog, where we are going to break down this term and show…

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A diagram of the inside of an object.

pXRF & QA/QC

August 18, 2022

Haven’t conducted a pXRF program in awhile? No worries, this post has you covered… to remind you to never ever forget to calibrate your equipment. Like any geochemical program, you’re also going to need to setup a rigorous QA/QC program…

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A diagram of the structure of an icosahedron.

Spectralucation July: Using Spectral Composition Data

July 21, 2022

If you are unaware, hyperspectral data is renown for producing mineral data; biotite, white mica, tourmaline, sulfates, carbonates, Fe-oxides… the list is long and diverse. However, spectral datasets also yield “composition” data, namely crystallinity and wavelength data. In this post…

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