PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Australian gold miners are set to benefit from new technology being deployed by mining services company Ausdrill, in Western Australia.
Ausdrill, through its subsidiary MinAnalytical, has installed a Chrysos photon assay machine at its facility, which will reduce the time to analyse a drilling sample from around 48 hours, to less than ten minutes.
The technology, which was developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, combines speed with a high degree of reliability, and is an alternative to the traditional fire assay process.
Ausdrill said on Thursday that the technology represented a chemistry-free approach to material analysis that have accurate results in minutes. It also delivered higher accuracy than fire assays, with significantly reduced sample preparation.
Furthermore, the new process enabled the sample to be tested repeatedly if required, unlike fire assay, which involved the destruction of the sample.
“For Australian mining companies, this technology delivers such a fast turnaround that has never been available to the market before, and does so with less sample preparation and in a non-destructive fashion,” said Ausdrill Australia CEO Andrew Broad.
“This opens up a whole range of possibilities for our clients to review their processes to take advantage of the accessibility to results, which ultimately will deliver cost savings to their business.
“This is game-changing technology, and it has certainly generated a lot of interest in the industry, with several major companies supplying samples for the validation process that we are currently working through.”
While gold is currently the focus for the technology, it may be used to analyse other minerals in the future, Broad said.
MinAnalytical is the first company to offer the technology to mining companies. The first machine has the capacity to analyse up to 50 000 samples a month, with a further commitment made to install the next two units into Kalgoorlie.