HyChips Analysis Service

HyChips™ is a NEW automated drill chip, pulp and core logging mineral analysis service that gives companies a cost effective tool for analysing alteration mineralogy.  The service analyses chip/pulp samples at a rate of 2400 samples a day or core at a rate of 250m per day.

Specialist software and processing techniques then assist the interpretation and analysis of the contained mineralogy and mineral characteristics.  The results output by the HyChips service can be used to assist in the development of a geological framework for understanding mineralisation alteration relationships in a project area.

Please take a look at our Applications section for examples of how to use the results output by the HyChips service to assist in exploration and mining.

Significantly, the HyChips data provide geologists with an objective method of logging, with the added benefit of providing an historical digital record of all chips and cores analysed.

HyChips delivers data on

• Alteration minerals: eg sericite, biotite, chlorite, alunite carbonate, kaolinite, pyrophyllite, dickite, diaspore, and topaz
• Primary minerals:  eg talc, amphibole, serpentine and prehnite.
• Weathering clays: eg kaolinite and smectite (montmorillonite, nontronite, saponite)
• Fe oxides: eg hematite and goethite.
• Other iron-bearing minerals: jarosite, pyroxene, olivine.
• Copper minerals: eg malachite, azurite and atacamite.
• Mineral crystallinity: eg kaolinite, sericite/white mica
• Mineral composition: eg biotite, chlorite, carbonate and sericite /white mica
• Sericite/white mica compositions from Fe-Mg rich Phengite to Muscovite to Na-rich Paragonite
• Chlorite and biotite compositions from Fe rich to Mg rich
• Weathering intensity, based on iron oxide intensity, and  kaolinite and smectite proportions
• Relative proportions of minerals
• Base of transported horizon