| Popis: |
The Sedimentology Lab, with the support of the Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals (GEM) and Targeted Geoscience Initiative (TGI4) Programs, set out to verify existing sieve cleaning methods used in geological sample preparation laboratories to ensure no cross contamination between samples. Three cleaning methods were tested using till samples with varying degrees of mineralization. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of commonly used cleaning methods at preventing cross contamination while sieving. This is critical to the quality of the geochemical analysis. Cleaning Method 1, while the quickest, does not remove contamination effectively for the two deposits sampled for this study. The addition of an extra step in Method 2 lowered the level of the potential contaminants without significant time increase. If known high mineralization exists, cleaning Method 3 is recommended otherwise Method 2 should be sufficient. In addition to sample preparation it would be a good practice, when submitting samples to be processed for geochemical analysis, to provide a processing order to the laboratory if they are aware of any potentially metal-rich samples. Metal-rich samples should be positioned at the end of the list to avoid any possible contamination due to sample preparation or analytical memory effect. Clean silica blanks should be inserted at the start of the batch and sieved blanks should be inserted to verify possible contamination in the preparation lab. The insertion of control reference materials (CRMs) and duplicates are also recommended for quality control. |
