ECORE: A New Fast Automated Quantitative Mineral and Elemental Core Scanner
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ELEMISSION Inc., Montréal, QC H4R 1V6, Canada
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Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Varennes, QC J3X 1S2, Canada
3
Optics Laboratory, INPT, Avenue Allal Al Fassi, Rabat, Morocco
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Pura Alfonso and Francesco Cavalcante
Minerals 2021, 11(8), 859; https://doi.org/10.3390/min11080859
Received: 3 June 2021
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Revised: 23 July 2021
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Accepted: 7 August 2021
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Published: 10 August 2021
(This article belongs to the Section Mineral Exploration Methods and Applications)
Scarce platinum group elements (PGE) are mainly concealed in massive sulfides, and finding economically viable ore bodies largely relies on their fast chemical mapping. Most core scanners provide incomplete mineralogical contents, but none also provide a complete chemical analysis including light elements. This study investigates the performance of a fully automated laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) core scanner, the ECORE, by comparing its reliability to a scanning electron microscope-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) mineral mapper and its speed to infrared diffuse reflectance hyperspectral imagers (IR-HSI). The LIBS elemental imaging has been put to the test in our previous work, as well as the high-resolution mineralogical mapping. This paper reports the scaling up analytical applicability of LIBS as a high performance and high-speed drill core scanner. The analysis of a full core tray in this study is the first and largest 7.62 megapixels image done by a LIBS core scanner to our knowledge. Both high-resolution and low-resolution data are put together to express both mineralogical and chemical content as a function of depth.
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Keywords:
drill core scanner; LIBS; PGE; core logging; quantitative automated mineralogy; multi-elemental assays
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MDPI and ACS Style
Paradis, M.-C.M.; Doucet, F.R.; Rifai, K.; Özcan, L.Ç.; Azami, N.; Vidal, F. ECORE: A New Fast Automated Quantitative Mineral and Elemental Core Scanner. Minerals 2021, 11, 859. https://doi.org/10.3390/min11080859
AMA Style
Paradis M-CM, Doucet FR, Rifai K, Özcan LÇ, Azami N, Vidal F. ECORE: A New Fast Automated Quantitative Mineral and Elemental Core Scanner. Minerals. 2021; 11(8):859. https://doi.org/10.3390/min11080859
Chicago/Turabian StyleParadis, Marie-Chloé M., François R. Doucet, Kheireddine Rifai, Lütfü Ç. Özcan, Nawfel Azami, and François Vidal. 2021. "ECORE: A New Fast Automated Quantitative Mineral and Elemental Core Scanner" Minerals 11, no. 8: 859. https://doi.org/10.3390/min11080859
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