An on-stream iron ore analyser has been developed in collaboration with Hamersley Iron Pty. Limited for determining the iron content of both lump (- 30+ 6 mm particle size) and fines ( - 6 mm particle size) on conveyor belts. The analyser, which is called IRONSCAN, is based on pair production, and is now commercially available from Mineral Controllnstrumentation Limited (MC!) in Adelaide. It can be mounted under existing conveyor belts with minimal modifications to the conveyor structure, and the presence of steel cables in the belt does not interfere once the analyser has been correctly calibrated. The analyser has been extensively tested on both lump and fines on the shiploading conveyor at Dampier, and typically the root mean square (Lm.s.) deviation between single IRONSCAN measurements and conventional chemical analyses is better than 0.5070 Fe. It is currently being evaluated on - 150 mm ore from the primary crusher at Mount Tom Price, and initial result are encouraging._x000D_
The principal advantage of IRONSCAN is that it provides rapid information on ore grades. But perhaps its greatest potential is at the primary crusher where conventional sampling and analysis is very expensive to implement.