Latest News
NEW MINE EQUIPMENT SAVES TIME AND MONEY. November 2009
At the touch of a button the hand-held XRF (X-ray Fluorescence) machine provides an analysis of approximately 25 mineral elements within a rock sample in order of abundance. It looks like a hairdryer but can do in seconds what conventional methods can take up to a week to prove.
The XRF works by firing the sample with an intense beam of X-rays which make the different elements within the sample fluoresce (give off light). The machine then reads the different wavelengths of fluorescence instantly, analysing them to provide a clear idea of the elements within the sample and in what concentration they occur.
Western United Mines (WUM), the owners of South Crofty, which includes all the workings beneath Camborne, Pool and Redruth, are delighted with the results provided by the XRF.
Chief Operations Officer, John Webster, said: "We have never intended to extract just tin from this mine. This will be a polymetallic operation which means we will also be mining copper, zinc, silver and possibly even some gold. We have also discovered significant amounts of indium, which is widely used in modern technology and enhances the value of our polymetallic ores significantly. We always believed there were vast mineral resources in Cornwall but this machine is proving they are potentially world class.
"Additionally we have extensive mineral rights throughout Cornwall and this device has a built in GPS receiver so we can very rapidly assess surface exposures while simultaneously generating accurate coordinates for these analyses."
Explorations at the mine include producing thousands of rock samples that need to have multi-element analysis. These are sent away for analysis at a cost of £30 each - with the results usually taking over a week to come back.
As John Webster explained, the XRF is an expensive piece of equipment but, with around 7,000 km of core samples and thousands of channel samples being planned each year, it is already well on the way to paying for itself.
