Bauxite Analysis Preparation Unit (Using FTIR)
Alcoa, one of the largest producers of aluminium in the world, mines 86,300 tons of ore every day which equates to the volume of Wembley Stadium!
Prior to mining such vast volumes, boreholes are made every metre and 1kg samples are collected. These samples are returned to the QA laboratory, ground and put into small bar-coded envelopes for evaluation of their bauxite content using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR).
Using this technique (in this case with a Hewlett Packard Analyser) a well prepared "flat surface" sample needs to be presented and rotated in front of the instrument for analysis.
Labman Automation in partnership with Alcoa and Honeywell, produced a unit to meet this requirement.
Main Features
- Complete automation of the sample preparation
- Packet picking
- Sample identification (Barcode reading)
- Packet opening
- Sampling from packet into analysis cup
- Surface sample preparation for FTIR analysis technique
- Analyser loading
- Data capture
- Analyser unloading
- Sample clean up
- Capacity for 1600 samples
- A complete cycle time of 17 seconds per sample
- Self cleaning analysis cups
- Sample tracking
- LIMS integration
