Instant geochemistry from mountain tops to the mid ocean ridges: X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) Spectroscopy on the move

Non-destructive, high-resolution, sediment and rock core scanners incorporating XRF spectrometry and other sensors are a key technique in petroleum, mining and environmental industrial applications and are now widely used in the earth and environmental sciences. They have radically improved our capability to understand naturally occurring and man-made processes in the terrestrial and marine environments. What is currently missing is an adaptive system that can provide instant geochemical compositions, including rare-earth elements (REEs), of hand specimens and sediment cores within field and laboratory situations. Furthermore, immediate analyses in the field may allow strategic changes to sample collection and site selection based upon geochemical results in the field. Such equipment provides precise and accurate field measurements that can represent primary data or be used to inform later laboratory protocols. NERC science currently does not have access to the market leading Olympus XRF Vanta M, the only sensor with REE capability that can be integrated with the Geotek Multi-Sensor Core Logger (MCSL). This instrument will allow BOSCORF to facilitate simultaneous XRF and geophysical properties analysis of sediments and other environmental samples and will further enhance BOSCORF's internationally recognised reputation of excellence. The addition of a Vanta system will substantially fill an analytical gap to significantly extend workflow.

The seagoing-component of the XRF will introduce new opportunities to the science party and will allow a more efficient use of ship time (one day at sea costing ~£35k; £100 per laboratory analysis). Currently, the majorities of samples taken at sea are laboratory analysed post expedition. Thus, repeat expeditions are necessary to further investigate the field site, which is an expensive and time-consuming process for the scientists as well as for the funding agency. Near-real to real time assessment of rock and sediment compositions with a portable XRF will provide a dynamic decision support while being in the field, i.e. sampling strategies can be orientated towards the most promising targets, resulting in a cost and time efficient field campaign with maximum output for budget and science.

The MSCL systems at BOSCORF enable a suite of geophysical measurements to be obtained rapidly, accurately and automatically on sediment or rock cores. Only Olympus portable XRFs can be integrated with the Geotek MSCL-XYZ system that BOSCORF currently has. No other portable XRF can be installed for automated sediment/rock core logging and combined with physical property sensors. MSCL-XYZ is a unique automated multi-core logging system for undertaking various surface core measurements. By adding the Vanta to this system multiple core sections (up to seven 1.5 m core sections), can be loaded onto the workstation, which are then logged in a single operation. This provides low user interaction system to collect high quality data rapidly.

XRF System advances include:
1. The Olympus Vanta M will include a high kV source (up to 50 kV) offering the ability to obtain information on the REEs that are not possible from many other portable XRFs on the market.
2. The Olympus Vanta series benefits from market-leading signal processing technology called "Axon". Axon technology is a software development that optimises the detector to provide higher X-ray counts per second and faster results. This will allow users to operate on a typical 15 second analysis time.

The NMF and BOSCORF provides a centralised community facilities for supporting marine and environmental sciences. These centralised facilities provide the science community with analytical capabilities that would otherwise be inaccessible to most researchers. Therefore the asset will have a wide impact across NERC science.

Measuring impact:
Impact will be reviewed annually by the BOSCORF Advisory Group and evaluated against the LRI KPIs and benefits realisation plan.

Science Impact:
BOSCORF is key to enabling research on sediment cores from a range of environments, which are critical for research into past environmental change, natural hazards, sustainable use of natural resources and pollution. Science impact will be monitored through BOSCORF contribution to peer reviewed publications.
International community impact: BOSCORF and NMF actively promotes and facilitates interdisciplinary and collaborative research; expansion of research and industry networks in the UK, EU and worldwide. Through the dissemination of specialised knowledge and innovation of new developments in core analysis and curatorial protocols, BOSCORF plays a major role in the international science community.

Environmental and economic benefits:
The usage of a portable XRF on seagoing expeditions will have a significant impact on the funding budget of a project and also on ship time resource. Due to dynamic decision processes at sea, the best possible samples can be collected, reducing the need for follow up expeditions to the same site, i.e. no additional ship costs for another expedition (£700,000 for six weeks) , consequently freeing up ship capacity for other research project and commercial charter. In addition, pre-screening of samples will allow scientist the best choice for additional laboratory analysis post expedition, that are often more expensive (e.g. 1 day LA-ICP-MS at £650) than potable XRF analysis, reducing the project costs.
Furthermore, new scientific users could be attracted to the usage of the NOC/NERC ships due to the availability of the XRF asset, extending the diverse use of the already flexible capacity of the ships.

Dynamic sampling strategy at sea will reduce the amount of unnecessary ship transits during field campaigns, fuel usage will also be reduced, which will have a positive impact on the environment. In addition, the usage of the portable XRF will help to reduce the chemical waste; currently, many hazardous chemicals are used on board of research ships (and within laboratories) to undertake geochemical analysis (often toxic for the environment and with H&S risks with regard to transport, storage und usage). On the other hand, portable XRF only has two main hazardous parts: a) X-ray source which isolated by safety switches and locked into a static position during the operation of the device; b) Li-ion batteries power the system, but are routinely present on the ships as part of other technologies such as AUV's. The usage of the portable XRF would reduce or potentially avoid the requirement for specific hazardous chemicals during expeditions, thus reducing the amount of hazardous wastes and provide a cost-saving on disposal charges, especially in the non-UK ports that do not operate strict waste management regulations, and shipping costs which overall allow to cut the global footprint of CO2 which is one of NERC's major long term strategy.