“Automation is not a threat to jobs, but a way to create more valuable and meaningful work for humans.” – Greg Satell

Recent developments across all industries and sectors indicate a significant shift in mindset regarding automation solutions. Previously, the primary focus for automating processes was the return on investment (ROI), with simple calculations comparing the costs of employees to the costs of automation. This approach often led to fears of machines replacing humans, with labor unions emphasizing the importance of job security. Over time, however, other aspects of automation, such as reproducibility and capacity, have gained importance.

Today, discussions with our customers center on how they can secure their teams for the future. Despite a high number of job vacancies, the labor market remains tight, with unemployment rates at historic lows. Many jobs are going unfilled due to a lack of suitable candidates. This is also the case for “low-level” jobs, particularly in roles like sampling and sample preparation in uncomfortable environments. The scarcity of suitable candidates contributes to another issue: high employee turnover in this field, making it difficult to ensure a smooth transfer of knowledge.

As a result, automation is now viewed from a different perspective, often contradicting the views held decades ago. Industries now face the reality that investing in automation is not just a matter of cost but a necessity to maintain their operational capabilities.

In addition to automation, upskilling has become crucial. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 indicates that almost half of the skills required for all jobs will need to change in the next five years. Employers are increasingly investing in reskilling and upskilling initiatives to prepare their workforce for these changes. Automation can help address this by taking on repetitive tasks and automated process monitoring. This allows human workers to focus on more complex roles.

Please let us know how we can help you to manage the dynamic challenges of the modern workforce.

Article Written By: Herzog Maschinenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG
July 5, 2024

How many people do you think there will be on Earth by 2050? According to the United Nations (UN), it’s likely to be around 9.7 billion. Just imagine how much waste 9.7 billion people will generate!

This matters to the building materials industry, and it’s easy to see why. People need houses and infrastructure, which in turn need concrete and cement. However, all this building comes at a cost to the planet.

So, how can we address these key issues that are so important to our future?

Industry impact

The majority of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions created by the cement industry come from two processes: heating the kilns, and the calcination of the principal calcium carbonate raw material (limestone).

In the manufacture of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) with 95% clinker, heating the rotary kiln using fossil fuels accounts for 38% of CO₂ emissions per ton of cement produced. We need to work out ways to bring down the energy consumption and emissions of this process.

The case for waste

Luckily, one reason the human population is so successful is that we’re great at problem-solving. It’s predicted that waste generation will grow 70% by 2050 (thanks to all those extra people) – which sounds like a big problem. But what if it could be put to good use? Well, some clever problem-solving humans have already found a way to use waste as an alternative fuel source!

Alternative fuels are already used within the cement industry. In addition, replacing fossil fuels with waste-derived fuels cuts emissions significantly. Burning waste as a fuel source is great for everyone, both communities and manufacturers, as the waste becomes productive instead of costing money to destroy or store it. The use of pre-existing infrastructure saves further resources, as the resulting heat from incineration is useful rather than wasted energy in a municipal plant.

And of course, manufacturers save money too – after all, who wouldn’t want to replace expensive fossil fuels with a resource people can’t wait to give away?

Enabling the switch

Convinced yet? There’s just one potential stumbling block.

Waste-derived alternative fuels tend to be highly variable in their material composition. They can have different moisture contents, particle size distributions, or even include toxic elements such as mercury, thallium, or cadmium – all of which could result in undesirable effects on the cement process, as well as possibly illegal or harmful emissions. This doesn’t mean these fuels shouldn’t be used, but they must be carefully controlled to ensure a stable fuel stream, maintain safety, and avoid environmental damage.

The best way to control the fuel stream and monitor its composition? Materials analysis – preferably fast and accurate to keep your operations running efficiently and enable maximum value.

Inside your analytical toolbox

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is one key technique for highly accurate and reproducible elemental characterization (and combines well with other methods too!). The Epsilon 4 is a great example of a compact XRF spectrometer that has integrated solutions for both solid and liquid waste-derived fuel samples, including sludge, wood, rubber, plastics, and more. This accommodates common materials ranging from biomass to oil, rice husk, and tyres.

The Epsilon 4 also works with the OMNIAN software, a standardless analysis program that quantifies elements from fluorine to americium when no matrix-specific standards are available – perfect for alternative fuel applications, where samples may be very inconsistent or even unidentified. 

For continuous process control (depending on the materials you’re analyzing), you can also opt for pulsed fast and thermal neutron analysis (PFTNA) with an instrument like the CNA Pentos cross-belt analyzer. The CNA measures bulk material on a belt without the need for sampling, and returns results in real time to enable immediate corrections where necessary. The CNA Pentos can also be deployed in other areas of the cement plant – in fact, it’s so popular with our building materials partners that we created an industry-specific Cement edition!

Greener cement for a cleaner world

It’s true that the future holds both challenges and opportunities for all of us – especially in the building materials industry. But with smart solutions and innovative tools, we can work not only to build the world of tomorrow, but make it a cleaner, greener place too.

Blog written by Murielle Goubard, Wednesday, 24th May 2023 – (Malvern Panalytical)

Over the last two decades small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) has seen a rise in popularity driven by the improved brightness and collimation of 3^rd generation synchrotron beams as well as upgrades in detection systems. However, recent technical advances in laboratory X-ray sources, hybrid pixel detection systems and improved analysis tools (corroborated with the progress in computer science that lead to an increase in calculation power necessary for easy and accurate data analysis of the large data sets generated) have made laboratory SAXS a powerful and versatile technique for the structural characterization of various samples.

Small angle X-ray scattering is an established technique in the experimental toolbox of many research labs. Numerous scientific research fields including materials, food, cosmetics, polymer science, among others, are using a large panel of characterization techniques such as electron microscopy, surface force measurement, nuclear magnetic resonance, light scattering and others. SAXS, by virtue of the X-ray nature of the light used to characterize samples, provides complementary information which can be essential in painting a complete picture of the sample. Its numerous advantages, such as limited requirements for sample preparation, speedy and non-destructive measurements, and the ability to offer both surface and bulk information, make it a standard characterization tool for morphology analysis at the nanometric scale. Recent interlaboratory studies [1] and the emergence of dedicated ISO standards [2,3] have proven the accuracy and traceability of the technique.

Furthermore, the high quality and statistically relevant results together with the possibility to perform experiments in-situ, operando, or under changing conditions (such as temperature, humidity or external fields (tensile, electrical etc.)) have enabled researchers to answer numerous scientific questions and share the newly acquired knowledge with the community through publications in peer-reviewed journals.

The number of publications with laboratory SAXS has doubled over the last decade

One of the key performance indicators of an experimental technique is the number and quality of publications accepted in peer-reviewed journals. In the last decade, the popularity of laboratory SAXS has seen tremendous growth, as it can be deduced from Fig. 1. The number of publications resulting from data collected either wholly or partially on laboratory small angle X-ray scattering instruments has shown a steady increase, doubling over the past decade. This ascending trend is also mimicked by the number of citations these papers have received, suggesting that the results obtained with laboratory SAXS have a considerable impact on the research fields to which they belong.

Fig. 1 In green, the monthly average number of papers published each year resulting from data collected either wholly or partially on laboratory small angle X-ray scattering instruments. In red, the monthly average number of citations received each year for all previously published articles. Data extracted from dimensions.ai in March 2024 and cumulated over all commercially available SAXS instruments.

A growth in the number of publications is however to be expected as this is the trend, with different rates, for most scientific fields. What is probably more telling of the technique’s popularity is the evolution, within the field of small angle X-ray scattering, of publications employing laboratory instruments. As showcased in Fig. 2, the percentage of publications performed on laboratory sources has consistently risen and accounts today for more than 50% of all publications that include SAXS data.

Fig. 2 Percentage of papers showcasing data collected either wholly or partially on laboratory small angle X-ray scattering instruments from the total number of articles presenting SAXS data. Data extracted from dimensions.ai in March 2024 and cumulated over all commercially available SAXS instruments and synchrotron SAXS beamlines. Data in good agreement with ref. [4].

Laboratory SAXS reveals a multitude of information on a variety of materials

The versatility of the technique is proven on one hand by the variety of materials studied and on the other by the multitude of information extracted from SAXS measurements. These are enabled by the capability of the technique to adapt the geometry of the measurement to the different requirements imposed by the samples. A wide range of length scales is available by detecting X-rays scattered into small angles (SAXS) revealing the structure between 1 and a few hundred nanometers or wide angles (WAXS) revealing structural information at the atomic scale. Even though most experiments are performed in transmission mode, as can be deduced from Fig. 3, grazing incidence (GI) geometry can be adopted in order to obtain surface and subsurface structural information or to study the structure of thin films.

Fig. 3 Distribution of measuring techniques used in recent publications. The data has been extracted from approximately 700 publications resulting from data obtained on Xenocs instruments in the period 2016 – 2020.

Fig. 4 shows a selection of samples presented in recently published articles. Not only do these exhibit very different structural characteristics (from biological materials to polymers, nanoparticles, and fibers) but they also cover multiple applications (such as drug formulation and delivery, renewable energy and storage, food, cosmetics, or materials science). This proves that laboratory SAXS plays an important role in the development of multiple research fields.

Fig. 4 Treemap showing the various materials studied with laboratory SAXS. The data has been extracted from approximately 700 publications resulting from data obtained on Xenocs instruments in the period 2016 – 2020.

For each of these samples, SAXS is able to provide a variety of information generally extracted from a single measurement. Fig. 5 displays a selection of information presented in recently published papers. Detailed structural analysis over different length scales plays a crucial role in understanding the interplay between nanostructures and their respective functions which in turn are essential for modern materials development.

Fig. 5 Word cloud showing the various types of information obtained with laboratory SAXS. The data has been extracted from approximately 700 publications resulting from data obtained on Xenocs instruments in the period 2016 – 2020.

Over the past years, laboratory small angle X-ray scattering has seen a steady increase in popularity, a trend which suggests that the technique will continue also in the future to strengthen its position as a standard method for nanostructural analysis touching a myriad of research domains. Given its important research influence on the characterization of materials, SAXS is very likely to play an increasingly impactful role in providing structural information on an ever-increasing array of systems.

Article written by: Xenocs

(www.xenocs.com)

References:

[1] C. Minelli et al., Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards (VAMAS) Interlaboratory Study on Measuring the Number Concentration of Colloidal Gold Nanoparticles, Nanoscale 14, 4690 (2022), DOI: 10.1039/D1NR07775A.

[2] International Organization for Standardization, Particle size analysis – Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), ISO 17867:2020, (2020). Retrieved from https://www.iso.org/standard/69213.html.

[3] International Organization for Standardization, Determination of the specific surface area of porous and particulate systems by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), ISO 20804:2022, (2022) Retrieved from https://www.iso.org/standard/69214.html.

[4] H. Fischer and A. Craievich, Scientific Literature of Small-Angle X-Ray and Neutron Scattering Applied to the Characterization of Materials at the Nanometer Scale, Mat. Res. 22, e20190327 (2019). DOI: 10.1590/1980-5373-MR-2019-0327.

What is X-ray Fluorescence?

X-ray fluorescence is an analytical technique that can be used to determine the chemical composition of a wide variety of sample types including solids, liquids, slurries and loose powders. XRF is also used to determine the thickness and composition of layers and coatings. It can analyze elements from beryllium (Be) to uranium (U) in concentration ranges from 100 wt% to sub-ppm levels.

Principles of X-Ray Fluorescence

XRF is an atomic emission method, similar in this respect to optical emission spectroscopy (OES), ICP and neutron activation analysis (gamma spectroscopy). Such methods measure the wavelength and intensity of ‘light’ (X-rays in this case) emitted by energized atoms in the sample. 

In XRF, irradiation by a primary X-ray beam from an X-ray tube causes the emission of fluorescent X-rays with discrete energies characteristic of the elements present in the sample.

Figure, right: Example of the X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) process: 1) Incoming photon 2) Characteristic photon.

Applications of X-Ray Fluorescence

XRF is a versatile analytical technique that finds application across an extensive spectrum of industries and scientific fields. Its adaptability and precision have made it an indispensable tool for understanding and manipulating the elemental composition of materials. From aiding in material identification and quality control in industries to preserving cultural heritage and advancing scientific research, XRF continues to play a pivotal role in enhancing our understanding of the elemental world.

Quality Control and Elemental Analysis

XRF is widely used in quality and process control. Users can quickly get accurate and precise results with limited effort on sample preparation, and it can be readily automated for use in high-throughput industrial environments. XRF’s precision and non-destructive nature make it an invaluable tool for quality control in various manufacturing sectors, such as: 

• Metallurgy: In metallurgical processes, XRF ensures the integrity of alloys by confirming their composition. It’s a critical step in manufacturing products such as aircraft components, car parts, and structural materials.
• Electronics: Electronics manufacturers employ XRF to inspect circuit boards, ensuring components’ adherence to strict elemental standards.
• Cement: XRF is employed in the cement industry for analyzing raw materials and alternative fuels, as well as controlling the quality of the final product.

Research and Development

XRF plays a pivotal role in materials research and development:

• Material Science: Researchers study the properties of materials and create new compounds (I.e., catalysts or coating materials) by precisely and accurately analyzing elemental composition.
• Semiconductor Industry: XRF contributes to the development of cutting-edge semiconductors by ensuring the purity and composition of materials used in chip manufacturing.
• Art and Archaeology: XRF helps conservators and archaeologists analyze pigments, ceramics, and artifacts, shedding light on their origins and authenticity.

Pharmaceuticals and Medicine

In the pharmaceutical and medical fields, XRF also has diverse applications:

• Drug Analysis: It verifies the quality and safety of drugs and ensures they meet stringent quality standards according to ICH-Q3D. XRF is also used as a quick screening tool before the samples are analyzed by the more labour intensive ICP and AAS methods. 
• Biomedical Research: XRF aids in studying trace elements in biological samples, offering insights into diseases and treatment.

Instruments with thoughtful innovations

Malvern Panalytical instruments’ have driven XRF innovation in several areas. Elemental analysis instruments can be energy-intensive and generate significant waste, but eco-efficient innovation from Malvern Panalytical has the potential to change this.

We also believe that an instrument should not be complicated to use just because it is powerful, so we have invested in user-friendly features that make method development and data quality management a breeze. With our XRF instruments, you benefit from the optimum combination of technological advancement, thoughtful flexibility, and sustainable performance.

No compromise on quality, speed, or accuracy

Speed or accuracy? There is often a dilemma with XRF spectrometers between quality data that is still usable and rapid results that are detailed enough. With our premium instruments, the trade-off between performance and speed disappears, thanks to innovative features and thoughtful design across our range.

We also offer innovative form factors for a variety of space requirements. Some of our portable and benchtop instruments have accuracy similar to floor-standing XRF instruments.

XRF instruments that can keep up with you

The XRF spectrometers of the past often struggled to keep up with the demands of an ambitious laboratory. Each sample method required extensive training, and the instruments often lacked the sample changer capacity for efficient measurement.

With our instruments, you can count on accurate results and high sample throughput, saving your lab valuable time. Fast feedback loops and a variety of monitoring features across our range further enhance your XRF efficiency by streamlining your workload and simplifying maintenance.

Advantages of XRF analysis

There are many ways to analyze elemental composition in quality control – ICP, AAS, and XRF, for example – and each technique has its advantages. But XRF has a particularly high number of advantages compared with other techniques.

Where alternative techniques often require destructive sampling for the analysis to work, XRF is fast and non-destructive. In addition, analysis can be done in air at the production site, and it’s typically more cost-effective than other techniques.

Blog Written by : Malvern Panalytical Ltd. 
(www.malvernpanalytical.com)

Today, directness is more than a virtue – it’s a strategy for success. And even the steel industry is following suit! Solutions such as direct reduced iron (DRI) are helping the industry to confront environmental challenges head-on by providing an alternative method to reduce iron ore, a notoriously energy-intensive process. With steel producers striving to reduce carbon emissions, evolving technologies and efficient methods are at the forefront of this revolutionary shift.

Taking the first step

Maximizing energy efficiency in steel production not only saves energy (and costs!) but significantly reduces emissions that damage the environment. Accurate process monitoring, using versatile technologies like X-ray diffraction (XRD) and pulsed fast and thermal neutron activation (PFTNA) on-line, can play a crucial role in optimizing both energy use and process efficiency. This is a great ‘first step’ for many production operations. These on-line tools can be used to create immediate impact within existing setups as drop-in solutions, speeding up analysis that was previously done manually, or improving blast furnace efficiency through more stable feeds. Later, the same solutions can form part of a new or updated process that is designed for greater sustainability in future and incorporates new methods.

The direct route

But how to get from this first step to a more futureproof setup? The industry’s pivot toward carbon neutrality is leading to the development of new technologies and carbon-free steel production methods – and DRI is quickly becoming a key player in this green revolution. By requiring both lower operating temperatures and much less (or no) coke during the iron reduction process, DRI represents a significant improvement in both energy consumption and emissions. It also represents a great ‘direct’ route to more sustainable operations due to its versatility.

In DRI processes, coke or another carbon reductant is replaced by a reducing gas, such as H₂. Iron ore pellets are reduced in a shaft furnace where the temperature can be relatively low – in the region of 800° C. Depending on the production setup, the DRI can then be fed either into a blast furnace as hot briquetted iron (HBI), in which case the blast furnace runs much more efficiently and uses less coke, or into an electric arc furnace (EAF).

Even while still relying on the blast furnace, DRI helps to significantly mitigate the environmental impact of this famously resource-hungry process – offering a way for producers to begin making progress quickly toward sustainability goals. When the EAF is used, this offers the opportunity to make the entire primary steelmaking production chain carbon neutral by powering the furnace with green electricity.

How efficiency unlocks the future

And process efficiency is no less relevant during this process than in the ‘old fashioned’ approach. Running both blast furnaces and EAFs at maximum efficiency will make a big difference to energy consumption – and this relies on smart monitoring.

XRD gives insight into critical parameters such as metallic iron content (Fe_met), metallization (Metⁿ), total carbon content (C_tot), and mineralogical phase content. One case study demonstrated that these parameters could be derived from a single five-minute measurement taken on an Aeris Metals edition XRD. By providing quick and precise control of these parameters, XRD removes the ‘brakes’ that could slow down the uptake and future potential of greener methods like DRI – and unlocks many other efficiencies throughout the steelmaking process.

Taking the direct approach together

The future of steelmaking is here – it’s efficient and green. With DRI processes as a great example and advanced technologies providing critical support, we’re witnessing a paradigm shift in the industry. The path to sustainable steelmaking is ‘direct,’ and it’s a journey we’re committed to navigating together.

Throughout the entire steel value chain, from raw material to steel and coating, cutting-edge technologies and efficient process monitoring are shaping the journey towards sustainability. Malvern Panalytical is leading this transformation by providing a blend of expertise and innovation for a greener future in the iron and steel industry – so, get in touch today to discover how we could bring the green transformation to your processes!

Blog Written by : Uwe König, Tuesday,15 August 2023
(www.materials-talks.com)

Kenneth deGraaf paints a picture of highly sophisticated gold plants that can provide improved sampling and ESG outcomes, thereby helping to meet the ongoing demand for gold that is processed safely, efficiently and sustainably.

Why is now the right time to be talking about harnessing technology to get the most out of gold processing plants?
Kenneth deGraaf (KD): Gold processing plants are operating in an increasingly challenging environment with regards to energy, labour and environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations. We are also seeing average grades of new deposits continuing to decline.

Optimising operations over a range of sometimes competing objectives requires the best available technology and trained personnel to operate and maintain plants. None of this has a simple answer, and the challenges are often site-specific. But harnessing the most advanced yet acceptable technology should always be a component of getting the most out of any mineral processing plant.

In your presentation at Gold Plant, you talked about the importance of correct sampling practice – can you please explain why this is critical for plant operators to get right? What sort of value can proper sampling provide?
KD: In a gold processing plant, if you don’t have accurate information on how much gold is entering and leaving the plant through various process streams then you will not know whether your plant is operating efficiently or if it is optimised.

What’s more, it is not enough to know how efficiently the plant is recovering the gold product – it is often important to know what deleterious elements the plant may also be processing and releasing into the tailings. It can also be very important for the tailings management team to know if desliming of tailings is meeting particle size specifications for the tailings storage facility. All of these require accurate sample collection and analyses.

How can laboratory automation improve plant optimisation and productivity?
KD: It is often overlooked that the largest errors in analysing any process stream containing solids (dry or slurry) occur in the initial collection of a sample and the subsequent sample preparation steps (crushing/splitting/pulverizing), not the actual analysis of the sample (fire assay or ICP analysis).

Properly selected and installed automated sampling systems that adhere to the Theory of Sampling are imperatives for unbiased accurate sample collection; it is physically impossible for a human to consistently collect unbiased samples from the usually large process flow streams in modern gold processing plants.

Once the samples are collected, consistent proper sample preparation is essential for maintaining the representativeness of any sample collected from a process stream. Automated sample collection and automated sample preparation laboratories deliver consistently more reliable samples and dependable sample preparation, which in turn provides reliable data for assessing plant performance and optimisation strategies.

Can you provide a real world example/case study of such a laboratory?
KD: FLSmidth has been involved in more than 90 per cent of the global robotic mining laboratories representing over 250 installations, so there are multiple examples/case studies to show the benefits of automated sampling and laboratories. Automated laboratories have been shown to reduce operational costs, enhance quality of analyses, deliver quicker turnaround of analytical results, and also deliver benefits regarding ergonomics, health and safety for plant personnel.

How do resource professionals fit into automated plants – what skills do they need and how will they continue to help deliver business improvements?
KD: For metallurgists and plant engineers, an automated plant would allow for more sophisticated and prompt analyses of operational parameters and the optimisation of process parameters and production. These would likely lead to improved recoveries, reduced reagent consumption/wastage, and lower energy and water consumption.

How might the resource plant of the future improve overall ESG outcomes?
KD: The resource plant of the future should improve overall ESG outcomes by reducing water wastage, reducing energy consumption and reducing emissions – both from fossil fuel usage and from reduced reagent usage. FLSmidth has its ‘Mission Zero’ initiative with the goal to deliver solutions in mining processes to manage zero-emissions by 2030. It’s an ambitious goal that we have proudly committed to that requires a paradigm shift in collaboration, innovation and adoption of new technologies in the mining industry.

Written by: Kenneth deGraaf, FLSmidth’s Global Product Line Manager. Originally published by: AusIMM Bulletin. Posted in: FLSmidth (www.flsmidth.com)

If you’ve ever baked a cake (or watched a baking show), you’ll know how important it is to use the right ingredients in the right quantities. Otherwise, your cake won’t taste very good – and it might not even look like a cake at all! (We’ve all been there.) But imagine if you were describing a list of baking ingredients to a robot, and said ‘sugar’. The robot might choose raw sugar cane, sugar syrup, or sugar lumps. They’re all sugar, after all – just in different forms!

So, the form or state of the ingredients is equally important information to know as what they’re made of. This is quite obvious when you’re working with delicious cake, but it becomes much trickier when you’re working at the microscopic level with individual elements.

Balancing the elements with XRF

In cement manufacturing, the final properties of the cement are affected by its chemical composition. The raw materials are limestone (the calcareous raw component containing CaO – typically around 85%), shale or clay (the argileous component containing SiO₂, Al₂O₃ and Fe₂O₃ – around 13%), and additives (SiO₂, Al₂O₃ and Fe₂O₃ at <1% each), which are crushed into powder and mixed to form raw mix. At this point, it’s vital to monitor exactly how much of each material is in the raw mix to keep the correct balance – and this careful monitoring continues throughout the production process using X-ray fluorescence, or XRF.

In fact, there is a whole array of oxides and elements to keep track of. For example, MgO should not exceed 4-5% to avoid cement expansion, alkalis (K, Na) can affect both kiln operation (build-ups) and product quality, and sulphurs can create setting issues and build-ups when present in excess (limited gypsum additions). The typical ratio of alkali to sulphur needs to be kept between 0.8-1.2 (molar). Finally, chloride content must be less than 0.02% to avoid serious build-up problems. XRF analysis is the best way to monitor all these various components, and has been used for process control in cement manufacturing for many years.

This mixture is fired in a furnace, where the heat causes the calcium carbonate of the limestone to decompose into calcium oxide. This part of the process releases carbon dioxide (CO₂) along with other by-products – another good reason to ensure all the ratios are precise, as minimizing CO₂ emissions is important both to reduce environmental impact and to comply with regulations. It’s also important to control the potentially hazardous elements in alternative fuels, which are increasingly being used to heat the kiln using recycled waste materials. These can cause other emissions that also have a negative impact on the environment.

Completing the picture with XRD

But while all this elemental composition data is invaluable, more information is needed. In our cake analogy, we know we need sugar, but we don’t yet know which form it should be in. That’s where X-ray diffraction (XRD) comes in.

XRD has been traditionally used to catch any instances of early hydration in the final cement product, but it can also be used for process control. Today, XRD is being used more and more often to control the mineralogy of cement clinker, as it identifies the crystalline phase of each component at key stages such as CaCO₃, CaSO₄, CaSO₄.1/2H₂O, CaSO₄.2H₂O, quartz, free lime, free magnesia (periclase), clinker phases and other mineral phases in conventional and alternative raw materials. The Rietveld method allows a complete quantitative picture of the crystal phases in cement, including polymorphs of alite and belite, along with free lime, calcite and calcium sulphates.

This is the key information that was missing before, giving deeper insight into the product as a whole and allowing a more holistic monitoring and control process. Increasingly, data from XRF and XRD are combined into a single report throughout the production process of cement and concrete, providing a well-rounded overview of both elemental composition, crystalline phase, and quality.

By combining XRF and XRD, it’s much easier for manufacturers to control the quality and final properties of their cement and concrete from an earlier stage in the process. This reduces waste, as any anomalies are picked up earlier, as well as making kilns more efficient and saving energy and CO₂ emissions.

Smart systems for future-proof processes

A highly accurate XRF spectrometer like Malvern Panalytical’s Zetium pairs well with a compact and robust XRD instrument, such as the Aeris. The benefit of using these together is that they both support automation using the Universal Automation Interface, and Malvern Panalytical offers support and guidance from initial setup to advice on sample preparation and technical assistance. Our instruments are suitable for use from a busy production environment to a laboratory, and can also be integrated into laboratory information management systems (LIMS).

Written by: Murielle Goubard, Posted by: Malvern Panalytical (www.materails-talks.com)

Contrary to what their name suggests, the 17 rare earth elements (REE) are not all that rare. In fact, they can be found in many minerals, and are often helpfully gathered together – but they occur in such small concentrations that they’re hard to isolate. So why go to the effort of trying to extract them?

To answer that, we need to understand why worldwide demand for REE has boomed in recent years (according to the US Geological Survey, REE mine production more than doubled between 2017 and 2021, to around 280,000 metric tons). Quite simply, it’s because REE are essential for the technologies that underpin today’s (and tomorrow’s) society. The elements that make up this group are used in everything from the everyday to the futuristic, in industries as diverse as electric mobility, wind power, consumer electronics, and defense technologies.

Facing up to the challenge

With demand for REE in applications like catalysts, screens, and magnets on the rise – and recycling rates remaining very low – getting hold of these valuable elements efficiently is becoming increasingly critical. Locating deposits for the most in-demand minerals can be a challenge all of its own, but even after sourcing, rare earth exploration and deposit mining need more frequent, more accurate monitoring solutions to ensure optimal characterization and processing. In turn, this can reduce the costs of reagents and improve the yield from the raw ore feed.

Twice as nice: Combine our XRD and XRF solutions

Malvern Panalytical’s Aeris Minerals edition provides the mineralogical insights mine operators are looking for. Using the power of X-ray diffraction (XRD), it enables operators to understand the qualitative and qualitative composition of complex REE-bearing minerals, including bastnäsite, synchesite, monazite, xenotime, florencite, eudialyte, catapleiite, aeschynite, and samarskite. With this intuitive compact machine, users can rely on high sample throughput with rapid analysis and maximum uptime. 

Better still, the Aeris is perfectly complemented by the Minerals edition of our Zetium X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer, the ideal solution for elemental analysis of geological materials. The Zetium Minerals edition has been designed to deliver superior analytical performance and stability, even in demanding mining environments. 

Together, the Aeris and Zetium Minerals editions support speedy, informed decision-making – giving your REE operations the edge and helping you mine those rarest of elements: time and cost efficiencies!

Written by: Uwe Konig, Posted by: Malvern Panalytical (www.materials-talks.com)