JKTech offers applied mineralogy consulting services to meet the growing market demand.

The JKTech mineralogy consulting team comprises of highly skilled experts in both general and process mineralogy.

Process Mineralogy
Process mineralogy is a respected inter-discipline in the fields of mineralogy and metallurgy and plays an important role in different stages of many mineral processing projects.  Process mineralogy consulting services offered at JKTech include:

·       Base metals mineralogy

·       Precious metals mineralogy

·       Mineral sands mineralogy

·       Automated mineralogy

·       Process mineralogy training


The minerals industry employs different processes to recover valuable minerals.  The recoveries of minerals of interest are often driven by mineralogical factors such as grain size, liberation, association with other minerals, coating and rimming, presence of cyanicides, oxygen consumers, preg-robbers and clay minerals, and locking in other minerals as trace substitutes.

   
Kotulskite (Pd(Te, Bi), creamy yellow) locked in pyrite (Py).  The largest kotulskite inclusion is approximately 4x12 µm in size.  To recover kotulskite inclusions, finer grinding is required.    Iron oxides (hematite and maghemite, <15 µm) locked in quartz (Qtz) in a roaster CIL tails.  These iron oxide particles were formed from pyrite and retained ~40% of gold in CIL tails. 

Process mineralogy helps address all issues and problems related to mineral processing.  It is widely used as a predictive and trouble-shooting tool in ore processing, and provides useful information on process selection, flowsheet development, recovery improvement and reagent consumption optimisation.


General Mineralogy
General mineralogy covers all mineralogical studies required at an early stage in an exploration program and for other geological samples, such as:

·       Characterisation of hand specimens and drill cores

·       Preparation and examination of rock samples

·       Separation and concentration of minerals of interest

·       Routine conventional and advanced instrumental analyses


Commercial MLA analyses are conducted by JKTech's joint venture company, ALS Mineralogy.


Key contact:  Joe Zhou, Manager Mineralogy Consulting