Mineralogy mining services

Mineralogy

Understanding the mineralogy of your samples is a key component in the mining cycle; from exploration through mineral processing to safe storage of tailings material, understanding your mineralogy is essential to maximise recoveries and minimise costs.

Bureau Veritas' mineralogy group has access to the latest cutting-edge technology to provide repeatable, reliable mineralogical data. Our team of professionals will use the right tool for the job to provide you with relevant, useful mineralogy data tailored to your specific needs.

Summary

MINERALOGY SERVICES

Laser Ablation Spot Analysis

Indicator minerals are a tried and tested geochemical exploration technique. The geochemical fingerprint in specific minerals can provide the exploration geologist with information on regional prospectivity, the likely presence or absence of base metal sulphide mineralization, or diamond-bearing rocks.

Bureau Veritas is the only commercial laboratory to provide laser ablation spot analysis on single mineral grains for geochemical fingerprinting. Typically, heavy mineral separation and grain picking of sediment samples, or the isolation of mineral grains from rocks is conducted prior to the submission of samples to the lab. On request, we can recommend high quality labs that perform grain picking services.

MineDsi

MineDSi is a geological, geochemical, and geophysical data viewing platform that incorporates core photographs, field data, and lab results. It allows the user to log core electronically and quickly check logging descriptions against single element and element ratio geochemistry. Cross-check descriptions utilize automated quality-check tools to ensure consistency throughout the project. All parameters are fully customizable and our in-house support team can assist building the perfect tools to capture all your project data. 

MineDSi is another leading innovation from Bureau Veritas and we provide on site support and training throughout all stages of implementation to ensure a smooth deployment on any scale of project.

Benefits include:

  • Manual core measurements are eliminated
  • Instantly create a geological database from your visual description
  • Import Bureau Veritas assay data directly into MineDSi via a WebAccess™ link.
  • Relate geological interpretations to assay results, geophysical data,or ASD/Hylogger/Panalytical Halo® mineralogical data in one place.

QEMSCAN

“...QEMSCAN® is a fully automated, non-destructive, micro-analysis system that provides rapid, statistically reliable and repeatable, mineralogical, petrographic and metallurgical data, from virtually any inorganic, and some organic, materials. It is used in the mining industry for mineral exploration, ore characterisation, and mineral process optimisation applications...”
(www.fei-natural-resources.com/products/qemscan.aspx, 2011)

Bureau Veritas' mineralogy team has over 20 years experience in the mining industry and more than 15 years experience in Automated Mineralogy technology. Our expertise in the usage of QEMSCAN technology allows us to tailor a solution to client’s specific needs.

Key Benefits

  • State-of-the-art solutions to assist exploration
  • Rapid & accurate solutions to optimise & improve programmes
  • Confidence & assurance in analysis, reliability

Spectral Services

Bureau Veritas Minerals offers the TerraSpec Halo Mineral Spectra Interpretation Service in partnership with ASD Inc. This service interprets Bureau Veritas Hylogger pulp/chip/core spectra, or customer-supplied spectra using the TerraSpec Halo algorithm to predict up to seven minerals and nine mineral scalars* that may be present in a sample.

*Scalars are additional spectral features that provide more information about the geochemistry of the deposit. For example, the AlOH scalar commonly associated with white micas is often used as a thermal gradient indicator.

X-Ray Diffraction (XRD)

X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) is a versatile technique that reveals detailed information about the chemical composition and crystallographic structure of natural and manufactured materials.

The Bureau Veritas Mineralogy team has over 30 years of combined XRD analytical experience with a strength in analysis and interpretation of results, focused on developing mineralogical analysis methods for the mining industry. Our team's experience covers a diverse range commodities and processes, including Ni sulphides and laterites, Cu sulphide acid leaching and Bauxite. Bureau Veritas’ current XRD instrumentation is the Panalytical X’Pert PRO XRD.

Our capabilities include:

  • Fast and accurate identification of bulk crystalline mineral phases
  • Qualitative, Semi-quantitative or Quantitative


For phase identification Bureau Veritas has the current and expanding library published by the ICDD. For quantification of mineral phases we use the commercial software package, Siroquant that utilises the Rietveld refinement process.