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Malvern Panalytical Scientific Award 2023

Our 2023 Scientific Award is now open – and there’s a €5,000 prize for the best entry.
Entries close August 31st – you’ve still got time!

Niton XL5 Mining & Exploration Comes To Australia

Niton XL5 Mining & Exploration Comes To Australia 2

Exciting News! PAS has access to the first Niton XL5 Mining & Exploration unit in Australia.

UTILISE MINING MODE TO GATHER ACCURATE, REAL TIME GEOCHEMICAL DATA AND MAXIMISE OVERALL PRODUCTIVITY.

Mining mode enables users to determine the concentration of elements from Mg to U in various types of geochemical materials. Reduce overheads by implementing the Niton XL5 for cost effective mining exploration, mineral discovery, mining operations and oil and gas exploration. Take full advantage of all the XL5 has to offer:
  • Qualitative and quantitative analysis for process and quality control
  • Rapid inspection and analysis to ensure product chemistry specifications are met
  • Portable options that are lightweight and easy to use, delivering non-destructive analysis and lab-quality results in the field.
The latest XRF product release from Thermo, has a number of improvements that are designed to meet the challenging product specification set by our customers, these include:
  • Dramatically Reduce Size and Weight
  • Improved Light Element Performance
  • Simple User Interface
  • Inbuilt GPS (standard)
  • Micro and Macro cameras
  • Hot Swap Batteries
  • 50kv 5Watt Xray Tube
  • and many more

For more information or a Demo please feel free to contact us directly.

PAS showcased the Niton XL5 Mining & Exploration Unit at the 2017 International Mining & Resources Conference. Check out the details below for more information, or contact us today.

Scrap Metal is Serious (Environmentally Responsible) Business

Scrap Metal is Serious (Environmentally Responsible) Business 4

Scrap Metal is Serious (Environmental Responsible) Business

When people today think of recycling, they may not automatically think, ‘Scrap Metal’. Yet this was the earliest form of recycling and continues to be a major contributor to environmental sustainability.

Thanks to the Scrap Metal Recycling Association of New Zealand (SMRANZ), here are some key facts you may not know:

  • Aluminium can be recycled indefinitely, as reprocessing does not damage its structure. Aluminium is also the most cost-effective material to recycle
  • Recycling 1kg of aluminium saves up to 6kg of bauxite, 4kg of chemical products, and 14 kWh of electricity – enough to power a TV for three hours
  • Two-thirds of all cans on supermarket shelves are made from steel. They have a very thin layer of tin that protects the surface of the can, which is why steel cans are often called “tins”
  • Every tonne of steel that is recycled saves 1.5 tonnes of iron ore and reduces air emissions by 86%
  • Steel scrap is essential in the process of making new steel and can be recycled indefinitely without losing its quality. Most new steel products use at least 25% recycled steel in their production

Information like this demonstrates the enormous value of fast, accurate analysis and identification of metals to expedite the scrap recycling process and to enhance export and trade opportunities.

In its November 2016 report, IBISWorld identified 250 Key Success Factors for a Scrap Metal Recycling business, with these being the most important:

  • Establishing key export markets
  • Access to a multi-skilled and flexible workforce
  • Access to efficient production and recycling techniques

That’s where portable analysis capabilities really shine.

Picture above: Jason Parker, our Sales Manager in New Zealand, had a great time at the recent SMRANZ Convention 2017, demonstrating the Niton XL5.

Monitoring Bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef with Hyperspectral Cameras and UAVs

Monitoring Bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef with Hyperspectral Cameras and UAVs 6

A recent article in UAS Vision, an online UK-based publication specialising in UAV news, has highlighted the revolutionary use of UAVs with Hyperspectral Cameras as demonstrated by two of our many innovative clients in Australia.

QUT’s remote sensing and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) experts are partnering with the Australian Institute for Marine Science (AIMS) to test whether small drones, machine learning and specialised hyperspectral cameras can monitor the Great Barrier Reef more quickly, efficiently and in more detail than manned aircraft and satellite surveys. QUT’s project leader Associate Professor Felipe Gonzalez said the team surveyed three reefs in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park from 60 metres in the air while AIMS divers recorded precise levels of coral bleaching from under the water.

“By taking readings from the air and verifying them against the AIMS data from below the surface, we are teaching the system how to see and classify bleaching levels,” said Professor Gonzalez an aeronautical engineer from QUT’s Institute for Future Environments and Australian Centre for Robotic Vision.  “Flying 60 metres above the water gives us a spatial resolution of 9.2 centimetres per pixel, which we’ve found to be more than enough detail to detect and monitor individual corals and their level of bleaching.

“This is great news for us because low-altitude drones can cover far more area in a day than in-water surveys and they’re not hampered by cloud cover as manned aircraft and satellites are – a system like this has the real potential to boost the frequency of monitoring activities in an economical way. The more data scientists have at their fingertips during a bleaching event, the better they can address it. We see small drones with hyperspectral cameras acting as a rapid response tool for threatened reefs during and after coral bleaching events.”

Roughly the size of Japan, the Great Barrier Reef is home to around 3,000 reefs stretching 2,300 kilometres, making it slow and costly to survey using traditional methods. Miniaturised hyperspectral cameras are key to the new aerial system. Not long ago, these cameras were so large and expensive only satellites and manned aircraft could carry them.

Standard cameras record images in three bands of the visible spectrum – red, green and blue – mixing those bands together to create colours as humans see them. Professor Gonzalez said the hyperspectral camera, by comparison, captures 270 bands in the visible and near-infrared portions of the spectrum, providing far more detail than the human eye can see and at an ultra-high resolution.

“You can’t just watch hyperspectral footage in the same way we can watch a video from a standard camera – we must process all the data to extract meaning from it,” Professor Gonzalez said. “We’re building an artificial intelligence system that processes the data by identifying and categorising the different ‘hyperspectral fingerprints’ for objects within the footage.

“Every object gives off a unique hyperspectral signature, like a fingerprint. The signature for sand is different to the signature for coral and, likewise, brain coral is different to soft coral. More importantly, an individual coral colony will give off different hyperspectral signatures as its bleaching level changes, so we can potentially track those changes in individual corals over time.

“The more fingerprints in our database, the more accurate and effective the system.”

Professor Gonzalez was one of three QUT researchers speaking at the World of Drones Congress in Brisbane, joining Professors Des Butler and Tristan Perez on the two-day program. QUT’s drone and remote-sensing innovations were on show at the congress’ accompanying expo, highlighting research advances in marine robots (COTSbot), agricultural robots (Ag Bot II), and in using UAVs to detect and monitor both pests and gas leaks.

QUT was the principal academic sponsor of the World of Drones Congress, which ran 31 August to 2 September.

 

Ⓒ UAS Vision 04/09/2017. Reprinted by permission.

PAS Opens in New Zealand

PAS is pleased to announce the opening of our first New Zealand office and we would like to introduce Jason Parker our New Zealand Sales Manager.

Jason who has recently moved from Johannesburg to Auckland has years of experience selling and support the Niton XRF product range along with a wide range of other products. This is a great opportunity for our New Zealand based customer to have such an experienced XRF person available locally, I am sure Jason will be in contact with you all soon to introduce himself.

Regards
Paul Martin
Managing Director

ASD Inc release Fieldspec Dual Collection Software

Stop waiting for “ideal” weather to get your fieldwork done.

The FieldSpec® Dual collection software system leverages the value and utility of the world’s most trusted line of portable field spectrometers. The software intercalibrates and wirelessly synchronizes two ASD FieldSpec spectroradiometers to collect near simultaneous white reference and sample target radiance spectra. The system virtually eliminates errors associated with time varying atmospheric conditions, one of the biggest challenges to collecting accurate field spectra.