Resource World Magazine

O C T O B E R / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 www.resourceworld.com 63 MININGWORLD Mineral Insights from Gold Sniffer, it comes with all the optical equipment including the light source, all the hardware and all the software. Kendall says he delivers the product personally so that he can train customers. The system has seen extensive field testing. "Some of the best field testing occurred in 2018 in Northern British Columbia in Stewart and in central Alaska. The project in Stewart took 4,000 measurements. It was one of the biggest sets of data I ever got. This measured data clearly showed the mineral morphology that produces high gold concentrations in the Stewart deposit," said Kendall. Analyses can be done on unpolished drill core. The curved outside of the drill core can be measured without cutting with a diamond saw. In Stewart, however, the drill core was cut and crushed, then put through a paper filter. The resulting powdered rock is put into a dish a bit bigger than a Toonie and patted flat. Kendall said, "An experienced person can make one of these pow- dered samples in about 30 to 60 seconds." The sample is then ready to be analyzed by Mineral Insights. This method is used to measure gold concentrations. It is also used to understand mineral morphology, the physical relationship of minerals. The software can display up to nine minerals at the same time with nine dif- ferent colours. Mineral Insights completes its measurement and analysis, and displays the detected minerals, in just 60 seconds. Mineral Insights provides a non-destructive measurement method that leaves the sample intact. The samples are totally unchanged by a measurement that uses visible light. Kendall says that they are continuing their work to further enhance the capabilities of Mineral Insights. They are developing a library of recipes and algorithms, which is now close to 50 miner- als. The script that specifies the data analysis algorithm is applied automatically, with one command, when the sample is analyzed. "This very easy approach to measuring multiple minerals puts us in a space where there will be a lot of applications. Ease of use is a very important feature that makes a wide variety of applica- tions practical. What geologists want is an answer and they want it quickly." Kendall says the idea is to have something easy to use at the drill site. "It all comes back to when I was the CEO of Excalibur Resources and I spent several weeks at our exploration camp in northwestern Ontario near Thunder Bay. It became very clear to me that what is needed is something in the core shack that is easy to use and that gives people answers quickly. So much of exploration comes down to the geologist going into the bush, obtaining samples, and then analysing them in the few hours that are available in the evening. This means that when they get up the next morning they know what they want to do. That's the objective," said Kendall. Kendall concluded, "What I am working on now is looking at this data and asking, what can we learn from this data about other minerals? What information can we extract from this data? It's like we opened this window and there is a huge vista. Because we are working in an area that no one has worked in before, we just keep finding out more and more." n WE PROMISE AND WE DELIVER GOLD PROJECTS FOR INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING Fayz Yacoub P. Geo. Professional Geologist Tel: (604) 831-0424 Email: fayz@ontrackexploration.com www.ontrackexploration.com LEFT: James Kendall Ph.D., P.Eng., president of Gold Sniffer Inc., and professor at the Haileybury School of Mines with his invention, Mineral Insights. Photo courtesy of James Kendall. RIGHT : Image shows the Mineral Insights detection at micron dimensions of gold (magenta) and the following sulphide minerals: chalcopyrite (green), pyrite (pink), molybdenite (orange) and sphalerite (blue). This measurement was done on unpolished drill core cut by a diamond saw and required only 90 seconds. The information provided by this Mineral Insights measurement can be used to accelerate gold and mineral exploration, and to increase gold and mineral recovery and profitability for operations at a mine.

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