A Selective Fragmentation (SELFRAG) device for liberating minerals, microfossils from rocks: more efficient, effective and safer for the UK community.

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High voltage material fragmentation device (commercially known as a SELFRAG lab) for effectively dust free sample fragmentation along grain boundaries, for UK researchers. A significant portion of NERC Science require the analyses of materials (minerals, fossils) that are extracted from solid rocks. The quality of the minerals or fossils extracted from the rocks directly impacts the data derived from their analyses. For example, for U-Th/He thermochronology, to interpret the 'cooling age' of a mineral requires knowledge of the crystals geometry, for other processes (cosmogenic nuclide dating) the puriting of the mineral separate that is dissolved to derive an exposure age, impacts the age uncertainty. Thus, for nearly all research applications, complete objects (as opposed to fragments) are highly preferable and often required. Increasingly, researchers are getting samples from difficult to access places and the amount of material is limited. This applies to expeditions to remote locations where physical limits and logistics limit sample size, and in scientific drilling where the volume of material is limited by the width of the drill core. In these cases, ensuring maximum recovery of high-quality minerals or microfossils from smaller volumes of rock sample is really important. Often the cost of obtaining samples can be many thousands of pounds (considering a single drill core can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to drill, and recover). Commercial high-voltage fragmentation devices are now commercially available (SELFRAG). Such devices present three major advantages over conventional crushing and milling processes: (1) IMPROVED QUALITY OF MATERIALS liberated from rocks, whole crystals (as opposed to fragments) and microfossils can be routinely recovered enhancing subsequent analyses and derived science (see below). Experience in the community is that some rocks that SELFRAG separation can make the samples viable compared to non-viable with conventional crushing/milling;(2) FASTER PROCESSING TIMES - processing via SELFRAG vs. conventional crushing and milling is ~6x faster (30 minutes vs. 3 hours, including cleaning time) resulting in significant improvements in process efficiencies; (3) SMALLER SAMPLE VOLUMES REQUIRED - for regular rocks estimated that sample size can be reduced 2 to 3x due to the higher yields of high-quality mineral/micro-fossils. This is becoming increasingly important studies where sample size is limited, i.e., fieldwork in remote regions, or when working with samples from scientific drilling (e.g., International Ocean Discovery Program based research).; (4) 'Dust-free' fragmentation of rock effectively eliminating user exposure to dust and harmful substances (e.g., asbestos, naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM)). Processing of samples is carried out in water - a much reduced need for personal protection equipment and/or extraction related to dust.A high-voltage selective fragmentation device (SELFRAG) for the UK would provide the broad benefits outlined above to an entire research community, providing safer and more efficient ways of working, and improved quality of materials liberated from rocks that will directly improve subsequent analyses. Finally, this is a relatively new technology and new innovations are still be explored and developed, for example using high-voltage to study the energy required for rock failure, or using high-voltage fragmentation to experiment with materials recycling (i.e., what is the most effective way to fragment an iPhone and recover the rare elements for re-use).