CSIRO’s HyLogging technology provides rapid, robotic scanning of drill core, chips and powder.

HyLogging™ systems

CSIRO’s HyLogging systems provide a means to routinely and objectively capture detailed mineralogical information from drill core, chips and powder using reflectance spectroscopy.

• 29 October 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

Hyperspectral logging of geological materials

• Hyperspectral logging
• Reflectance spectroscopy

Hyperspectral logging

There has been rapid global development and expansion of resource operations in the past decade.

Detailed geological models and knowledge of mineralogy are necessary to discover and develop our resources.

Until recently geologists, metallurgists and geotechnical engineers have had to manually interpret and record minerals present in diamond drill core, percussion drill chips and blast-hole powders, to produce these models.

The advent of hyperspectral logging technologies now provide a means for the objective and rapid, mineralogical logging of materials derived from drilling.

With this comes the opportunity to gain new insights into the characteristics of geological and mineral systems and the potential to become more efficient and effective at developing our resources.

Typical geological core tray.

The results of hyperspectral logging can be applied to a number of disciplines, including:

• mineral and petroleum exploration
• mine planning
• geotechnical engineering
• geometallurgy.

CSIRO has developed a suite of hyperspectral, or HyLogging™ tools, that employ reflectance spectroscopy to determine the diagnostic spectral features indicative of the mineralogy, mineral chemistry and physical characteristics of geological samples.

These tools have been developed to provide non-destructive, rapid and statistically robust sampling of often very expensively drilled materials.

Reflectance spectroscopy

Reflectance spectroscopy involves exposure of samples to a light (energy) source and measuring the intensity of the reflected light at varying wavelengths.

Individual minerals can be identified through the characteristic reflection of light by their component molecules.

Quartz and Magnesite spectral ‘fingerprints’. Click on image to view high resolution image.

When molecules are exposed to energy they begin to vibrate; stretching and rotating their chemical bonds.

A combination of vibration and electronic changes at the molecular and atomic level results in the selective absorption of incoming light, and its reflection, at specific and unique wavelengths (the spectral signature).

The reflected light is measured and characterised by spectrometers, and individual minerals can be identified by their unique spectral signature.

CSIRO’s Hylogging™ systems use spectrometers. Spectrometers measure the reflectance spectra over a range of wavelengths to detect minerals common to geological and mineral systems.