SAEL. Stewart Assay and Environmental Laboratories

Ultra Trace Level Methods - Aqua Regia Digestion For Drill Core And Rocks

Method selection can be key to achieving exploration success. Sample type, target commodity, and pathfinder elements should all be considered when selecting the most appropriate method for your project. Aqua regia readily dissolves many sulfide, oxide and carbonate minerals quantitatively while leaving silicates and resistive oxides untouched. Many volatile pathfinder elements, particularly mercury, are preserved during digestion. These considerations make aqua regia an excellent exploration tool for various deposit types that involve gold, silver and base metals hosted in sulfide and carbonate minerals. Native metals such as gold and silver may not be representatively characterized by the small sample sizes used in these methods (nugget effect), and some refractory minerals and elements such as molybdenum are not brought into solution in aqua regia. In these cases, fire assay may be used in combination with AR/UT, or a four acid digestion may be preferable. Minimum sample size is 1g. Multi-element analysis 46 elements by aqua regia, icp-ms and icp-aes

Ultra Trace Level Methods - Four acid Digestion For Drill Core And Rocks

Four acid digestion quantitatively dissolves nearly all minerals in the majority of geological materials. However, it may sometimes be necessary to use even stronger dissolution techniques such as fusions in order to achieve fully quantitative results for refractory minerals. These may include barite, rare earth oxides, columbite-tantalite, and tin and tungsten minerals. Four acid digestion can also volatilize certain exploration pathfinder elements, in particular mercury. Mercury may be added to the package at a special price detailed below, or a custom suite of elements can be added using the single-element aqua regia method on the opposite page as well. 46 Elements by Four Acid, ICP-MS and ICP-AES

Trace Level Methods By Aqua Regia

These methods are economical tools for first pass exploration geochemistry. In addition, despite the fact that some of the base metals are largely quantitatively dissolved, for most of the geological matrices, the data obtained during the aqua-regia digestion should be considered only as representing the leachable part of the specific element being analyzed. Minimum sample size is 1g. 36 Elements by Aqua Regia, ICP-AES

Trace Level Methods By Four Acid

Four acid digestions are able to dissolve most minerals and although the term "near-total" is used, not all elements are quantitatively extracted in some sample matrices. Minimum sample size is 1g. 37 Elements by Four Acid, ICP-MS and ICP-AES

Low Grade Mineralized Materials

These packages can be used as an economical alternative to analyzing low grade ore or samples with known mineralization. The method precision is intermediate between exploration geochemistry and an assay procedure. Minimum sample size is 1g.

Four Acid "Near-Total" Digestion

The four acid digestion package is suitable for low grade mineralized materials and provides improved accuracy and precision levels over geochemical method MA/ES/H. Minimum sample size is 1g.

Lithium Borate Fusion

A lithium borate fusion of the sample prior to acid dissolution and ICP-MS analysis provides the most quantitative analysis approach for a broad suite of trace elements. This technique solubilizes most mineral species, including those that are highly refractory.

Methods For Metallurgical Samples

Analysis of mine metallurgical samples is critical for the purchase and sale of commodities as well as the optimization of the recovery process. With so much riding on a correct result, control assays require meticulous work by highly trained technicians. The results must be of the highest caliber for reliability, accuracy and precision. SAEL maintains wide range of methods for metallurgical materials of gold mines in order to offer full range services. Metallurgical materials include ores, concentrates, bullions, activated carbon, and cyanide liquors. Chemical analysis and metallurgical test methods are used for these materials.

Activated Carbon

Carbons from loaded to barren and reactivates are covered by these methods. Minimum samples weight for chemical analysis is 5g and for test is 100g.

Concentrates

Analysis of concentrate used only for optimization of recovery process and to support our metallurgical tests. Minimum sample weight is 50 g.

Bullions

Analysis of bullion for gold and silver is performed/can be performed upon special request by classical fire assay technique in duplicate at least. Bullion impurities including penalty elements are performed by ICP-AES following aqua regia digestion. Minimum sample weight is 1 g.
Mill Solutions
Metals including gold and silver in cyanide liquors performed by ICP-AES.