AGQ Labs’ mining division has been awarded a contract to carry out the environmental monitoring of the quality of soil, water, plant and hydrobiological tissue at Glencore’s Contonga polymetallic mine, in Peru.

The Contonga mine, in Ancash, is owned by Glencore subsidiary Compañía Minera Los Quenuales. It is a polymetallic underground zinc, lead, copper and silver mine with more than 100 years of operating history, according to AGQ Labs. Glencore acquired the asset from Nyrstar back in September 2017.

The mining company, as part of its environmental commitment at the mine, performs environmental monitoring of its components to determine their chemical stability and the potential for acid mine generation, as well as their characterisation through complementary studies, AGQ Labs said.

AGQ Labs Mining will provide the sampling service and technical analytical support through a specialised service for the characterisation of soils, waters and plant tissue. This uses selective analytical techniques for the characterisation of the matrices under study.

For this, AGQ Labs uses a set of tests to define the quality of the soils under study through fertility tests and characterisation of the profiles.

Mobilisation of the different analytes under study are also characterised through leaching tests such as methodologies proposed by Tessier and the Flask Extraction Test. The characterisation of its acid generation capacity with ABA methodologies and mineralogy analysis is carried out with Thin Sheet Microscopy.

AGQ Labs said: “The characterisation works are complemented by the taxonomic classification of the most representative flora and the study of the waters through laboratory analyses of physicochemical and hydrobiological parameters.”