Mine On-Line Service (MOLS) has been working in the Nordic market since 2007 with its novel mobile geochemical analysis lab Scanmobile. During the last year, the Scannmobile has been working actively at the national drill core storages at Loppi Finland, Malå Sweden and Lökken,Norway.
The national drill core storages are managed by the Geological Surveys of Finland (GTK), Sweden (SGU) and Norway (NGU). The national core storages house old and new drill cores, the oldest ones dating back for more than one hundred years, available for exploration companies for review. The storages house significant amount of drill cores exceeding in Finland three million, in Sweden four million and in Norway 200,000m. These cores come from past exploration projects from which, according to the local laws, all companies have to provide a representative sample of the drill cores to the national core storages. The national core storages have at their sites core logging rooms combined with convenient lodging facilities for interested customers.
MOLS has been doing analytical service for their customers at the national core storages with the Scanmobile mobile lab. The Scanmobile uses X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) elemental analysis and digital imaging technology for analyzing documenting the drill cores.
"Scanmobile is an ideal tool for analyzing the cores at these locations because its analysis methods are non destructive," says Ilpo Auranen CEO of the Mine On-Line Service.
It scans the exposed surface of the drill cores with its XRF analyzer and takes high resolution digital images on drill cores in the box. The core pictures are further analyzed to detect minerals and evaluate rock quality (RQD-value). The drill cores are left intact and interested customers will have the possibility to look at them also in the future. In some cases we have analyzed old drill cores where only a quarter is left. They have been analyzed twice before with conventional analysis methods destroying half of the remaining core with each analysis. The Scanmobile’s XRF is the only method capable of analyzing these because the remaining core quarters are not allowed to be destroyed with further lab analysis.
Another good feature of the Scanmobile service is its web browser reporting system and logging tool, the Remolog™, which enables our customers view and even to log the cores remotely. The Remolog™ combines the geochemical analysis results with high resolution drill core pictures in an easy to use format.
An additional advantage is the speed of analysis. "We can analyze several hundreds of meters of drill cores per day with the Scanmobile and have the results available at the Remolog on the following day, if desired" says Mr. Auranen. "The speed combined with the fact that our customers can bypass the national core storage logging facility’s often long booking line, because the analysis is done at the core storage not at the logging room, will further enhance the speed of our service and shorter or customers time-to-mine."