Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Canada is one of the main global producers of Platinum Group Elements (PGEs, including platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, osmium, and ruthenium). These precious metals are in high demand due to their exceptional physical and chemical properties. Currently, the measurement of platinum and palladium (two of the main PGEs) content in the ore from the mining site by lead fire assay needs at best 1 to 2 days. However, many operational decisions, especially in the exploitation stages, should be taken by engineers and geologists ideally in real time. At this time, there is nowhere in the world a technology for characterizing the content of these precious metal in the ore in real time and in the field conditions of the mining environment or of the production line. The proposed project aims to establish the bases for developing a new portable and compact technology for measuring, in situ and in real time, average concentrations of the PGEs in rocks down to a fraction of a part per million. The proposed system is based on the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) technique. In short, this technique relies on the use of a laser to ablate the surface of the material to be analyzed; the intensity of the measured spectral emission of the plasma generated is then compared with a calibration curve that provides the concentration of the element of interest. Our team already has considerable experience in the development and use of innovative approaches for LIBS. This multidisciplinary project (lasers, plasma spectroscopy, geology, mining engineering) involves four researchers from the academic (INRS and Laval University) and government (NRC) sectors, as well as two major companies operating PGEs in Canada: Glencore, through XPS Expert Process Solutions, and North American Palladium.*