In summer 2018, Bourevestnik Inc. has delivered and commissioned the “Specialized wave-dispersive analyzer ARF-7” at Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Combinat (NMMC, Navoi, Uzbekistan Republic). NMMC is a multi-field mining and processing enterprise, and it is ranked in the top ten of global leading companies in the production of gold and uranium. The NMMC’s structure includes five major mining and metallurgical enterprises, as well as “Navoi Machine Building Plant” Industrial Union and Zarafshan Construction Administration.

The X-ray fluorescence analyzer ARF-7 delivered for Navoi MMC shall be used to solve problems in quantitative elemental analysis of gold-bearing and uranium ores being mined. The main problem is to determine the level of uranium, thorium, yttrium, arsenic and strontium. Under conditions of the Central Research Engineering Laboratory, these chemical elements shall be identified without prior sample preparation, starting from 4, 9, 30, 870 and g/t, respectively.

The specialized wave-dispersive X-ray fluorescence analyzer based upon the high-resolution X-ray optical scheme of Koshua, with resolution of 40 eV, is designed for high-precision quantitative determination of U, Th, Mo, Au, W, Tl, As, Pb and other elements in ores and subsurface rock, as well as in exploration of technogenic deposits. For instruments of the ARF series, the Russian Scientific-Research Institute of Mineral Resources named after N.M.Fedorovsky has developed and certified a technique to identify uranium within the concentration range of 0.0001 – 10%, which is based upon the standard-background method, and the intensity of incoherently scattered radiation from an X-ray tube with a molybdenum anode is used as background.

This method specifies error parameters for identifying uranium within the concentration range of 0.0001% and higher. Similar results can also be obtained for thorium.

In the NMMC territory, instruments of the previous generation – ARF-6 analyzers developed in 1970s – were formerly used successfully. Due to the state-of-the-art technologies and automation, the replacing ARF-7 instrument has simplified and increased the expressiveness of the analysis, and it has also expanded the range of tasks for quantitative elemental analysis performed by the NMMC laboratory. Thus, ARF-7 has enabled supplementing the formerly identified uranium and strontium with quantitative determination of thorium, arsenic and yttrium. All measurements are performed automatically.

Bourevestnik, Inc. is the largest Russian enterprise for research, development and manufacture of X-ray equipment for industrial and scientific applications. It is the subsidiary of PJSC ALROSA.