Automated Mineral Analyser - Automated mineralogical analysis to underpin earth sciences

自动矿物分析仪 - 自动矿物学分析支撑地球科学

• 批准号: NE/T009063/1
• 负责人: Richard Jeremy Herrington
• 金额: $ 38.23万
• 依托单位: Natural History Museum
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FT009063%2F1
• 关键词: Automated; Mineral; Analyser; mineralogical; analysis

Despite the uptake of automated scanning electron microscopes (SEM) in both material research and industry, the full potential of SEM automated mineralogy (automated mineral analysis or AMA) is still under-developed, and thus under-utilised. It is clear that these instruments have great potential to deliver innovation applying machine learning to the analysis of solid materials. AMA combines different data from the SEM to provide information on mineral composition, trace element distribution, spatial characteristics and phase distribution. There are a number of key science areas identified where such information could drive innovation.The transition from carbon-based energy to renewables is underpinned by a growing demand for natural resources that provide the metals for the enabling technologies. This presents an enormous challenge to industry - to meet this need while at the same time reducing the impacts and energy costs of finding, evaluating and recovering the required metals. Better understanding of metal deportment in the natural ores, products and wastes is a key part of that challenge and AMA contributes to that through the ability to rapidly characterise bulk samples of primary ores, leading to optimisation of grinding, flotation, mineral concentration and metallurgical processes (geometallurgy). There is also huge potential to develop such instruments to provide data to better guide explorers to where new ore deposits may be found, and this is one key area of research focus at the NHM. In addition, AMA has great potential for research studies applied to volcanology, metal ore fingerprinting, investigation of slags, pottery and artefacts from archaeological sites and the investigation of soil, and solid particles of all kinds, for instance in forensic science. The technology has great potential to help in investigations of solar system material like meteorites and future samples collected by new space missions, and airborne fallout particles from volcanic eruptions and forest/bush fires - some of the other NERC research areas currently being developed at the NHM. Basing a new, state-of-the-art AMA at the NHM opens up the opportunity to develop new workstreams for the instrument and machine-learning approaches to integrate with other technologies such as optical mineralogy, laser ablation inductively coupled mass-spectrometry (LA-ICPMS) analysis, micro-XRD and CT scanning - some of the advanced technologies also based at the museum. The NHM has a proven track record in developing analytical systems with the necessary expertise in a supported laboratory with access to world class collections of rocks, ores and minerals that underpin the research efforts. Alongside the other open access facilities, the instrument will be easily accessible to a range of users, including researchers in consortia from already active grants held at the NHM (NERC - FAMOS, CoG3, Te@Se, VoiLA; Innovate UK Faraday Battery Challenge - Li4UK; EU H2020- SYNTHESYS+, CROCODILE, EURO-PLANET).

尽管在材料研究和工业中采用了自动扫描电子显微镜（SEM），但SEM自动矿物学（自动矿物分析或AMA）的全部潜力仍未得到充分开发，因此未得到充分利用。很明显，这些仪器在将机器学习应用于固体材料分析方面具有巨大的创新潜力。AMA结合了来自SEM的不同数据，提供了关于矿物成分、微量元素分布、空间特征和相分布的信息。从碳基能源到可再生能源的过渡是由对自然资源的日益增长的需求所支撑的，自然资源为技术提供了金属。这对工业提出了巨大的挑战-满足这一需求，同时减少寻找，评估和回收所需金属的影响和能源成本。更好地了解金属在天然矿石、产品和废物中的行为是这一挑战的关键部分，AMA通过快速分析原生矿石的散装样品，从而优化研磨、浮选、选矿和冶金工艺（几何学），为这一挑战做出了贡献。开发此类仪器以提供数据以更好地指导勘探者发现新矿床的潜力也很大，这是NHM研究重点的一个关键领域。此外，AMA在应用于火山学、金属矿石指纹、考古遗址的炉渣、陶器和人工制品调查以及土壤调查和各种固体颗粒的研究方面具有巨大潜力，例如法医学。该技术具有很大的潜力，可以帮助研究太阳系材料，如陨石和新的太空任务收集的未来样本，以及火山爆发和森林/丛林火灾的空气沉降颗粒-NHM目前正在开发的其他NERC研究领域。在NHM建立一个新的、最先进的AMA为仪器和机器学习方法开发新的工作流程提供了机会，以与其他技术相结合，如光学矿物学、激光烧蚀电感耦合质谱（LA-ICPMS）分析、微XRD和CT扫描-其中一些先进技术也在博物馆。NHM在开发分析系统方面有着良好的记录，该系统在一个支持实验室中具有必要的专业知识，可以访问支持研究工作的世界级岩石，矿石和矿物收藏。除了其他开放获取设施外，该仪器将易于一系列用户使用，包括来自NHM已经积极赠款的研究人员（NERC - FAMOS，CoG 3，Te@Se，VoiLA; Innovate UK法拉第电池挑战-Li 4UK; EU H2020- SYNTHESYS+，CROCODILE，EURO-PLANET）。