 Wed, Nov 19, 2008 03:37 PM
| 2005-10-13 |
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2008-05-22  Golden News | Checking out rocks from the inside out
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| | By Meredith Knight |
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May 22, 2008
The machine looks like a cat scan or an MRI, but it doesn't scan injured knees or bumped heads. Instead, the QEMSCAN takes pictures of the mineral content of rocks and gives researchers a topographic map of the mineral composition of even the smallest specks of dirt.
QEMSCAN is the star of the newly opened Center for Advanced Mineralogy at the Colorado School of Mines. It is the only research-based machine of its kind in the United States.
A group of technicians, professors and researchers huddle around the machine looking at the analysis of the latest sample. The image looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. The orange splotches show copper, the green streaks are copper mixed with oxygen, and the light orange are other minerals.
The Center's mission is to find new applications for the machine, which was originally made for the mining industry by Intellection, an Australian company. Miners are interested in knowing both where a desired mineral like gold is in a rock sample and its chemical form.
Minerals in nature often appear in mixtures called ores. For instance, gold is often found with silver. Depending on what other chemicals are mixed with it, miners can use different chemistry techniques to pull out the desired mineral.
Karin Hoal, director of the Advanced Mineralogy Center, said the facility would be open for researchers from all School of Mines Departments to use.
"The Center embodies the university's emphasis on interdisciplinary research and education," Hoal said in an announcement of the opening in April.
Having researchers from many departments use the machine will help the center find applications in the medical, archeological and energy fields.
One researcher at the center, Jorista Botha, is going to look for iron content in areas where there is a high rate of tuberculosis infections. The bacteria that causes TB thrives on iron, so knowing how much iron is in the ground will help identify locations that are at high-risk. Then, Botha will scan the cysts from lungs of buffalo infected with TB to see if the mineral content of the infection is related to the iron content in the ground where the buffalo live.
Hoal said other projects planned for the center include analyzing the mineral content of ancient tools from Africa that were used by early man.
Intellection, one of the lab sponsors who donated the QEMSCAN machine, also recently opened an office in Westminster.
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