INDUSTRY

March 2022 ESRFnews

High-throughput detection of trace elements in ores comes to BM23.

Quality control is of huge importance to the mining industry. Companies need to measure the quantities of trace elements down to the parts-per- million level, and in as many samples as possible, to have confidence in the ore they are mining and have better control over the reserves. But high-throughput characterisation at this sensitivity has been only a dream until now. In collaboration with the ESRF

and a major mining company which cannot be named for reasons of commercial sensitivity geoscientist Manuel Muñoz of the University of Montpellier in France has helped the ESRF s BM23 beamline develop an automated X-ray fluorescence analytics service that can process thousands of ore samples a day. The

project was made possible by the ESRF STREAMLINE project (see Streamlining science , below). During a discussion, my associate informed me of a major challenge of characterising mineral deposits in trace elements, for tens of thousands of samples, which was, of course, unfeasible for existing characterisation techniques, says Muñoz. In fact, what was possible was

better than Muñoz had imagined. He approached Olivier Mathon, scientist- in-charge at BM23, and Yves Watier and Johannes Frey, engineers in the ESRF Sample Environment Group, with the idea that a large grid of samples and an autosampler based on translational motors would be suitable. Thanks to STREAMLINE, he ended

Speed mining

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up with a sample-changing robot, which delivered even greater throughput. The robot sample changer is a

flexible tool that can be deployed to many different beamlines, says Ennio Capria at the ESRF Business Development Office. It comprises a robotic arm and a laser system the latter is for precise positioning of the sample. A well-calibrated geometry is required to ensure a precise, reliable and reproducible configuration between the beam, sample and detector. According to Muñoz, the speed of

analytics at BM23 is now so great that preparing the samples has become the limiting factor. He and his colleagues in the mining industry plan to collect data in one or two runs every six months, with a total of 12,000 datasets over three years. The results from all the different runs have to be perfectly comparable, he says. This is an analytical challenge. It is a question of reproducibility, of maintaining a consistent X-ray flux on samples across runs. All this had to be anticipated when we created the sample holder. 

Jon Cartwright

The speed of analytics at BM23 is so great that preparing the samples has become the limiting factor

Manuel Muñoz makes use of a robot to scan more than a thousand samples in a single run.

The EBS has not only delivered 100-fold gains in brilliance and coherence for the ESRF, but has also made a number of wider developments possible. With a suite of new and enhanced beamlines, and a new data strategy, the upgrade has enabled experiments to proceed much faster with the potential for many more experiments in total. Funded by the European Commission s Horizon 2020 programme, the 5m ESRF STREAMLINE project aims to fully exploit this potential for academia and industry, through new services, new modes of access and new technology for experimental automation.

STREAMLINING SCIENCE

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