Roger Meier of Panalytical will deliver a keynote speech at the forthcoming 9th International Congress for Applied Mineralogy (Icam) to be held 8-10 September 2008 in Brisbane, Australia
His presentation opens the 'Analytical Techniques and Automated Instrumentation' section of the Icam technical programme.
Meier is market segment manager building materials and minerals at Panalytical.
The focus of his talk will be 'XRD-referenced Rietveld analysis of clinker and cement when using alternative fuels and raw materials'.
This examines the importance of X-ray diffraction (XRD) in the cement industry, looking at how the development of ultra-fast detectors (Panalytical's X'Celerator and Pixcel,) has enabled XRD to move into the process control arena.
Complementing X-ray fluorescence (XRF), which delivers the elemental analysis that is important when using alternative fuels and raw materials, XRD determines the crystalline phases of species present in clinker and cement samples.
The nature of these species directly affects the mechanical strength of the finished cement and must be tightly controlled to ensure optimal performance.
Integrated into fully automated systems and driven through a user-friendly interface, new XRD instrumentation delivers accurate phase quantification in less than five minutes.
Incorporating referenced Rietveld analysis, these systems offer unprecedented accuracy and precision for optimizing cement plant performance, without the need for specialist operators.
Resulting improvements in plant efficiency provide significant economic benefits.
In addition to the keynote lecture, Panalytical experts will make four other contributions at the conference, covering different applications of X-ray analysis: Fluorescence spectrometry; Chemically pure synthetic standards for wide range analysis of oxides in geological material using wavelength dispersive X-Ray fluorescence spectrometry; X-Ray diffraction with Rietveld refinement applied to Amazon bauxite; and XRD Rietveld quantitative analysis on Brazilian iron ores.
The theme of this Icam event is 'automating quantitative mineralogy' and the conference will include three days of presentations, practical workshops and an exhibition.
High-profile experts from around the world will address a wide range of applied mineralogy subjects, such as advanced materials, image processing, geometallurgy, process mineralogy and mineral exploration.
