Brooks Applied Labs (BAL) continues to expand our analytical capabilities and knowledge to further support the complex issues encountered by the mining industry. BAL has experience supporting gold, molybdenum, lead, phosphate, taconite, silver, and uranium mines throughout the world. Whether it is the application of our total elemental results to confirm an issue exists or our metalloid speciation analyses to ascertain the fate and transport or treatability of the contaminants, BAL can support your needs.

Wastewater and solids from mines can be challenging due to the abundance of rare earth elements (REE). The presence of REE at elevated concentrations can contribute to spectral interferences when utilizing inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for the analysis. The spectral interferences typically yield high-biased results for transition elements and soft metals such as arsenic and selenium, which is never a desired outcome. At BAL we understand these issues, which is why we employ state of the art analytical technologies to ensure the results we report are as representative of the samples and as accurate as possible. Trace element results from BAL are viewed as the gold standard in the industry and are relied upon to make high-level decisions, which may result in confirmation that a problem does or does not exist, or provide insight as to whether or not additional resource expenditure is appropriate.

Upon verification that contaminants are present at elevated concentrations, BAL has a suite of preparatory and analytical options to elucidate the fate and transport, as well as the treatability, in both terrestrial and aquatic environments. We perform a number of selective sequential extraction methods specific to the element(s) of concern, which allows for either correlation of the contaminant with substrate characteristics (e.g., carbonates, reducible, oxidizable, adsorbed onto iron oxyhydroxides, etc.) or groups of molecules (e.g., sulfides, organics, elemental, etc.). In many instances, more specificity is required and BAL is prepared to support direct quantitation of different molecular forms (species) of metals and halogens in both aqueous and solids phases. We have expended significant internal resources over the decades to validate the scientific integrity of our proprietary methods and procedures.

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