Greatland Gold reports that Mobile Metal Ion (MMI) surveys have commenced at the Ernest Giles project. The company expects to announce results from the MMI surveys prior to the commencement of drilling.
The current exploration program at Ernest Giles will focus on three high priority targets at the Meadows, Wishbone and Empress areas. The current exploration program includes plans for approximately 24 RC drill holes at the Meadows area to test a large 5 km long by 1.5 km wide anomaly defined by Deep Sensing Geochemistry work, and up to six RC holes at the Wishbone and Empress areas to test basement geology and physical rock properties.
SGS is the sole provider of MMI technology, with over 15 years of experience providing this technology. There are many benefits to using MMI technology for soil geochemistry:
• Few false anomalies
• Focused, sharp anomalies
• Excellent repeatability
• Definition of metal zones and associations
• Detection of deeply buried mineralization
• Low background values (low noise)
• Low limits of detection.
MMI technology is an innovative analytical process that uses a unique approach to the analysis of metals in soils and related materials. Target elements are extracted using weak solutions of organic and inorganic compounds rather than conventional aggressive acid or cyanide-based digests. MMI solutions contain strong ligands, which detach and hold metal ions that were loosely bound to soil particles by weak atomic forces in aqueous solution. This extraction does not dissolve the bound forms of the metal ions. Thus, the metal ions in the MMI solutions are the chemically active or ‘mobile’ component of the sample. Because these mobile, loosely bound complexes are in very low concentrations, measurement is by conventional ICP-MS and the latest evolution of this technology, ICP-MS Dynamic Reaction Cell™ (DRC II™). This allows the reporting of very low detection limits.
MMI technology uses proprietary extractants. MMI-M is a new, single multi-element leach that now provides an option to measure the concentration of a broad selection of mobile elements. With MMI-M, you can create your own individual multi-element packages, using any or all commodity elements, diamond host rock elements, lithological elements or pathfinder elements. SGS also offers enhanced detection limits with the MMI-ME package.
Greatland Gold has six main projects; four situated in Western Australia and two in Tasmania. It is seeking to identify large mineral deposits in areas that have not been subject to extensive exploration previously. It is widely recognised that the next generation of large deposits will come from such under-explored areas and Greatland is applying advanced exploration techniques to investigate a number of carefully selected targets within its focused licence portfolio.
