Using two dimensional sectional distributions to infer three dimensional volumetric distributions - Validation using tomography

The critical process parameter for mineral separation is the degree of mineral liberation achieved by comminution. The degree of liberation provides an upper limit of efficiency for any physical separation process. The standard approach to measuring mineral liberation uses mineralogical analysis based two-dimensional sections of particles which may be acquired using a scanning electron microscope and back-scatter electron analysis or from an analysis of an image acquired using an optical microscope. Over the last 100 years, mathematical techniques have been developed to use this two dimensional information to infer three-dimensional information about the particles. For mineral processing, a particle that contains more than one mineral (a composite particle) may appear to be liberated (contain only one mineral) when analysed using only its revealed particle section. The mathematical techniques used to interpret three-dimensional information belong, to a branch of mathematics called stereology. However methods to obtain the full mineral liberation distribution of particles from particle sections are relatively new. To verify these adjustment methods, we require an experimental method which can accurately measure both sectional and three dimensional properties. Micro Cone Beam Tomography provides such a method for suitable particles and hence, provides a way to validate methods used to convert two-dimensional measurements to three dimensional estimates. For this study ore particles from a well-characterised sample were subjected to conventional mineralogical analysis (using particle sections) to estimate three-dimensional properties of the particles. A subset of these particles was analysed using a micro-cone beam tomograph. This paper presents a comparison of the three-dimensional properties predicted from measured two-dimensional sections with the measured three-dimensional properties.