Fast and flexible

Summary: For determination of the composition of minerals, at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology a laser method was developed that can be used for the fast online analysis of a wide range of raw materials. The non-contact multi-element analysis with which a direct sorting criterion can be determined, also enables automatic and economic single-particle sorting of rocks and ores. On a demonstration rig, an efficient reduction of the MgO content of limestone production samples could be realized.

1 Introduction

For efficient exploitation of natural raw material deposits and high-quality processing, for many, especially complexly structured and inhomogeneous deposits, a sorting of the extracted raw materials is required. The sorting processes used in the processing of minerals separate the material to be sorted based on one sorting criterion, which only indirectly correlates with the chemical composition of the material. For example, ores are separated according to their density or their surface wettability. For a sorting that actually separates the material directly according to the...