Today's resource companies are challenged to keep up with the global demand for minerals and metals, fueled by the developing economies of areas such as China and India. Due to pressure from governments through environmental policies, most resource companies have opted to meet demand through yield improvement of existing mine operations rather than by opening new mines. Mine-site yield improvement calls for new technologies to enhance processes such as mineral liberation. One emerging technology involving high-resolution SEM characterization and microanalysis is automated mineralogy.
Automated Mineralogy Solution
The Mineral Liberation Analyzer (MLA) is an automated mineral-analysis system that can identify minerals in polished sections of drill core, particulate, or lump materials and quantify a wide range of mineral characteristics, such as mineral abundance, grain size, and liberation. Mineral texture and liberation potential are fundamental properties of ore and drive its economic treatment, making the data gathered by the MLA invaluable to geologists, mineralogists, and metallurgists who engage in process optimization, mine feasibility studies, and ore characterization analyses.
Obtain more information from the MLA brochure [PDF]
Mining Platforms
FEI's mining industry solutions are built on world-class scanning electron microscope (SEM) platform with integrated liquid-nitrogen free spectrometers and powerful mineral analysis software featuring both automated and manual control modes.
The FEI mining platform offers natural resource companies a complete turnkey solution. Featuring full-spectrum, integrated instrumentation and software solutions for all mineral resources' phases—from exploration to final products—FEI's SEM hardware configuration and the software's data parameters provide a complete mineral analysis solution.