Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

This proposed research project will change the ways that mineral and ore samples are analyzed. When complete, the technology will provide faster, cheaper, safer assays for the mining industry and will enable close to real-time analysis results for minerals and ores. The overall vision for the technology will be that a ground ore or mineral sample will be weighed into a reaction tube and, through automation, the entire sample preparation process will be completely automated and samples will be delivered directly into sample vials for final determination of elemental concentrations.Laboratories, that perform analyses of ore and mineral samples for the mining industry, have faced the difficult problem of dissolving samples, which is required for their instruments to measure concentrations of elements in them. Typically, samples are dissolved, often over several hours at high temperature, in concentrated acids, some of which, most notably, hydrofluoric and perchloric acids are, respectively, highly toxic or potentially explosive. The new technology, that has been developed, proven, and extended by a collaboration between Brock University and Chemquant, a small company, based in Mississauga, Ontario, is called COLDBLOCKTM. The program of research that will be performed will take the initial technology, and optimize it by automating it. Techniques developed using this system will require smaller amounts of acids, they will eliminate perchloric acid, and will significantly reduce exposure of operatives to hydrofluoric acid by requiring less of it and by generating the acid, in situ, rather than handling the acid itself. Results from this research will include: - Reduction of costs for infrastructure, by drastically reducing the physical infrastructure - Reduction in risks to health and safety by making the processing of samples intrinsically safer - Flowing from the first two points, the results of the research will allow, in some cases, laboratories to be built at mines in remote areas, thereby improving the overall efficiency of mines by providing close to real-time results for their operations