SAMPLING , ANALYSIS AND LAB ASSAY
Orexplore is looking to change the exploration analysis business model from ‘ send your rocks to where our lab happens to be ’ to ‘ sense on site in near real time and connect your best global SMEs rapidly to speed up your decision processes ’, Brett Giroud says
Bringing the lab to the field
The commercial laboratory ’ s leading position in the mining decision-making space remains in place , yet a host of solutions coming to the field are facilitating a new era of data-backed calls that could speed up mine development , Dan Gleeson reports
The revolution in the sampling , analysis and laboratory-based assay space has continued unabated over the last few years , accelerating at an unprecedented pace thanks to a host of demand-side factors and supply-side constraints .
The expected growth in demand for commodities , the need to accelerate development , the shortage of industry skills across pretty much all disciplines and the aftereffects of COVID have all had a part to play here .
Against this backdrop , IM looked at several parts of the mining process to find out how new technology is addressing these market fundamentals by putting the right data in the right hands at the right time .
Sense on site
Orexplore is disrupting the normal exploration regime of drill , transport , then destructively analyse drill core , by putting decisions back in the hands of customers in the field , through its Geocore X10 platform .
More than this , the company is out to transform several well-established mining processes – from exploration through operations and onwards to closure – with the provision of close-to-real-time analysis of both drill core and chips .
At the centre of the company ’ s offering is the
GeoCore X10 ® hardware – which uses X-ray Transmission ( XRT ) computerised tomography ( CT ) to provide ‘ through-the-core ’ structural 3D imaging of material – and the Orexplore Insight ® software , which allows operators to analyse geological structures , texture , particles , density and elemental and mineralogical composition .
This next-generation non-destructive scanning and analysis technology can extract insights from drilled core in a faster , more sustainable way , improving decision making across the mining value chain rapidly and directly in the field , Orexplore claims .
The ability to scan a range of samples from multi-size drill core to chips and the platform ’ s unique technological approach is driving the development of multiple software products , to meet industry pain points and unlock new value across the mining value chain , according to Orexplore ’ s Managing Director , Brett Giroud .
Included within this is an exploration targeting tool where mineralisation indicators and vectors can guide drilling campaigns ; resource to reserve conversion opportunities where 3D field information supports accelerated conversion and techno-economic reviews ; extraction economics where methods of extraction and processing are optimised to the deposits at hand , for instance rock characterisation based ore sorting ; emerging ESG applications looking at acid drainage and waste impact monitoring ; and an
operations tool where the platform is leveraged to optimise core sampling and provide potential grade control verification .
The company has had publicised success with the first two products – exploration targeting and resource to reserve conversion – as Giroud expanded on .
“ The Wiluna Mining engagement we had earlier in the year was all about exploration decision support , with the product used as an exploration vectoring tool really ,” he told IM . “ The application leveraged the CT scanner in the sensor through Insight , to rapidly interpret particular rock characterisation in the drill core . “ Importantly , this technology architecture allowed field-based teams to receive results 15 minutes after the drill core was put into the GeoCore X10 unit .”
This project covered a two-month period and saw Orexplore scan and analyse circa-2,000 m of NQ core on-site at Wiluna Mining ’ s namesake gold project in Western Australia .
The resource to reserve conversion application is ongoing with OZ Minerals where Orexplore has been supplying site-based drill core and sample scanning services using its hardware and software .
Giroud explained : “ OZ Minerals is very focused on accelerating resource to reserve conversion and carrying out due diligence on deposits faster than others , in addition to increasing the orebody knowledge in the ground . We ’ re providing completely new information sets – not just assay information – and putting geology ‘ back into the deposit ’.”
The deployment is part of OZ Minerals ’ Think & Act Differently incubator approach , aimed at identifying and testing new flowsheet options and leveraging open-source crowds to apply advanced data analytics to large data sets that will be generated .
By efficiently and quickly connecting orebody knowledge to best select optimised process plants using Orexplore ’ s technology , OZ Minerals can potentially “ move the needle ” on the speed , price and outcomes on its project technoeconomics , Giroud added .
The scope of Orexplore ’ s field deployment in South Australia is focused on the scanning and analysis of a large amount of historical drill core and samples on site , from a core farm that has been created over many years .
Outside of these two publicised deployments , Orexplore is actively developing adjacent products with multiple parties through extracting particle knowledge and other information to
42 International Mining | FEBRUARY 2023