OreAlyzer testwork ready for new phase
Richard Roberts, 3rd Jul 2012
JULY 3 - RESULTS from ongoing trials of Atlas Copco’s state-of-the-art drill sample analysis technology have been described as “encouraging”, with more than 2700 samples from 1100m of drilling said to have produced comparable base metal ore-grade readings to those subsequently received from lab testing.
“The OreAlyzer is right on the money and has actually been finding indications of slightly higher concentrations of ore because it’s able to sample much more accurately [and] several times within a hole, and also plot exactly where that sample was taken,” Atlas Copco’s business line manager - surface drilling in Australia, Tom Ross, said in Perth last week.
“We’ve done reconciliations. Where we’ve done the trials we’ve also had the geologists working side by side, and we’ve done third party testing,” Ross said.
Showing an Atlas Copco surface mine grade-control drill rig working in Finland this year with the OreAlyzer XRF analyser, instrumentation and software onboard, Ross said he still expected to get an OreAlyzer rig out to Australia this year.
“We aim to do more trials,” he said. “But our initial trials are encouraging. We’ve done 1100 drill metres, 2700 samples, and we get the results immediately. There is no waiting for geologists to take it back to the lab, to test it, analyse it; we have the cold hard numbers there.”
Atlas Copco has been working on the OreAlyzer for the past five years. Meanwhile, it has developed technology that enables its surface and production drills to work almost completely autonomously, while drilling to computer-controlled depths without operator input.
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