AuScope backs HyLogger for global mineralogy trove
HyLogger and the NVCL are now a global NCRIS commercialisation success story. Image: AuScope / Lee Harrop / SemiletovaOlga / GSSA / Alamy Stock Photo
What do fast wifi, aerogard and HyLogger have in common? All three are CSIRO science innovations, but the third you may not know, despite its fifteen-year history and far-reaching positive impact on the planet about to unfurl. With early NCRIS investment via AuScope, the quiet achieving HyLogger has changed the game for geologists hunting for minerals thanks to its rapid mineralogy scanning capability.
Born out of necessity
HyLogger was born out of necessity like many inventions: to overcome a challenge. The challenge here has been growing nationally since the sixties, as geologists look deeper underground for new ore deposits and rely increasingly on expensive drilling and sometimes geophysics surveys as essential exploration methods.
In drilling programs, geological core extracted from the Earth is often logged visually by young geologists, analysed only in part and with a narrow focus in a laboratory, and finally stored or discarded. As a result, data can be subjective or patchy and often inaccessible for future investigations. And, collecting it is laborious as HyLogger co-inventor Dr Jon Huntington knows well from first-hand experience:
‘As a newly graduated geologist logging drill core in southern Spain in the sixties, I said to myself: there has to be a better way.’
Each year, mineral explorers drill approximately 10 million metres of core (1), with each metre costing approximately $250 per metre (2). Each metre represents a wealth of geological information with value today and into the future. Failing to capture that information today results in an enormous lost opportunity for the country as it seeks to secure a new supply of critical minerals. Renee Birchall, CSIRO; References: (1) 2019 figures from Geoscience Australia (2) Pers. Comm Dr Jess Stromberg, CSIRO – Mineral Resources.
That better way came along more than three decades later when, as Jon notes:
“The perfect conjunction of new sensing technology, years of preparatory CSIRO know-how, and a rapidly expanding digital world aligned with an industry need. My colleague Lew Whitbourn and I embarked on something innovative that we were convinced was seriously needed and suited the already tech-savvy Australian mining industry”.
And so, the first-ever HyLogger hyperspectral mineralogy sensing instrument was born, set to enable routine, industrial-scale, objective mineralogical interpretation in Australia. But funding remained a question.
The proud CSIRO HyLogger invention team pose for a photo with a HyLogger instrument. Image: Chris Taylor
Catching our eye early
This excellent example of frugal innovation that combines available technologies caught AuScope’s eye in its first year of operation in 2006 as a cornerstone national collaborative research capability for its portfolio. AuScope saw the potential to help transform the bespoke, untested research instrument to nationally critical infrastructure and promptly helped purchase six more HyLoggers — one for each of the State and Territory geological surveys — in its National Virtual Core Library (NVCL) Program.
Over a decade later, that leading Australian economist, Nick Gruen, too, sees merit in NVCL:
‘AuScope does something, which the moment you hear about it… you think, yeah, of course, we should do that, they run a whole bunch of things to do with Australia's geology, [including] a core sample library.
So if you are looking for gold or oil, you can go and consult the core samples of people who've been there before. That information is massively valuable and [has a benefit-to-cost ratio of around
$15 for every dollar spent on it.’
A treasure trove today
Fifteen years on, the NVCL team now provides users from academia, government and industry with access to HyLogger data from more than 1.6 million metres of core derived from more than 4,373 drill holes across the country. They also build capacity in users to capture, process and analyse HyLogger data, building national capacity in the geosciences.
Map of Australia in the AuScope Discovery Portal. It shows the location of all geological drill holes for which HyLogger data is now available. Illustration: Dr Carsten Laukamp / AuScope
Making sense of HyLogger data
Speed and accuracy have been the driving forces of this new technology. This new capacity was made possible by integrating CSIRO’s The Spectral Geologist (TSG) software with the national Hylogger system. Combining the observational power of HyLoggers with the computational power of TSG has resulted in a cost-effective, accurate and objective automated geological logging and interpretation system.
TSG’s Log screen juxtaposes spectral data, linescan imagery, profilometer data, geochemical data, comment fields and any other types of numerical and text field relevant to the data set in drill hole log format. Image: TSG
Engaging across academia, industry and education
Over the years, the NVCL team has engaged across academia, industry, government and education sectors. Here two users reflect on how HyLogger and the NVCL have benefited their work.
Tony Roache, a senior spectral and structural geologist at AngloGold Ashanti says that the NVCL has identified the mineral resource sector’s need for easily searchable and accessible geological datasets.
By leveraging the precompetitive mineralogy and photography from HyLoggers across Australia, he says:
“...the NVCL has provided our geologists with the opportunity to virtually explore a representative cross-section of Australia’s significant mineral deposits, thereby bolstering their knowledge of the mineral systems
they strive to discover.”
Anthony Budd from Geoscience Australia and MinEx CRC’s National Drilling Initiative (NDI) says that, in the first drilling campaign of the NDI, MinEx CRC drilled 11 holes in the unexplored Barkly region of the Northern Territory. The chips and core were Hylogged by the Northern Territory Geological Survey before any destructive sampling. The data was then made publicly available through NVCL. He says that this (continuing) workflow provides three impacts:
“It makes an ever-lasting digital twin; it facilitated researcher input remotely during sampling (COVID-19 prevented many from travelling) - as well as providing guidance during sampling, and greatly reduced the time it has taken to make data publicly available for explorers to benefit from.”
The NVCL team run and participate in several training and outreach activities each year, including science talks for school and university students (left), artist collaborations (centre) and National Science Week campaigns (right). Images: Georgina Gordon (left), Lee Harrop (centre) and Dr Jess Stromberg (right).
Growing commercial legs
In 2017, HyLogger took another leap forward when CSIRO licenced HyLogger to Corescan, an Australian owned company that fabricates drill core hyperspectral sensing instruments and services laboratories in Australia, South East Asia, Canada, USA, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Argentina.
AuScope has provided funding for three new HyLogger instruments (HyLogger™4s), which Corescan Pty Ltd will release in FY21, ensuring the ongoing success of the NVCL nationally, while at the same time keeping Australia at the forefront of delivering hyperspectral drill core analytical data globally.
Managing Director of CoreScan, Neil Goodey, reflects on this new HyLogger chapter:
‘Corescan will offer support services to the existing HyLogger community [nationally and abroad] and will leverage its global reach to bring the technology to new international markets.”
Influencing globally
The Australian NVCL has caught the eye of international researchers. As a result, the NVCL team is working with current and potential collaborators worldwide to develop virtual core libraries overseas. The most recent addition to the worldwide virtual core libraries is GTK’s National Digital drill Core Archive of Finland. Representatives from the GTK joined a recent NVCL workshop in Sydney in 2020.
In another development, NVCL Program Leader Dr Carsten Laukamp worked with researchers from the University of Chile in Santiago de Chile to help develop solutions to challenges experienced by the mineral resources sector across the mining life value chain. For example, Hyperspectral technologies, such as the HyLogger, enabled the industry to improve ore body characterisation, with a high potential for increasing the quality of the ore and reducing the carbon footprint of mining operations. Geological Surveys and commercial laboratories in Mexico, China, South Africa and Australia have also added HyLoggers to their toolkits.
Future innovation
AuScope’s NVCL has established a sophisticated, operational and evolving open-source system that has revolutionised geoscientific data across multiple sectors and is now contributing to global research efforts. The HyLogging approach and the NVCL have generated world-leading technology in the field of drill core analytics, software and workflows for rapid and reliable interpretation of large amounts of drill core data and upskilling the current and next generation of geologists.
NVCL Program Leader, Dr Carsten Laukamp imagines NVCL’s future:
“Geological Surveys and the mineral resources industry across the world have recognised the value of the NVCL and HyLogging. Continental-scale analysis of the NVCL database is accessible to researchers now. Linking drill core and other geoscience databases across Australia and the world should be possible by the end of this decade.
But the next big step is to establish NVCL’s technologies and workflows to other industries investigating Earth’s critical zone, such as water and agriculture. Only if all these sectors work hand in hand, and not compete with each other, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals can be met.”
AUTHORS
Written by Philomena Manifold, Jo Condon, Dr Carsten Laukamp, Dr Jessica Stromberg and Dr Jon Huntington. We are grateful for contributions from Tony Roache, Anthony Budd and Neil Goodey.
KEY FACTS
Over 1 million metres of core data from more than 3,000 holes is now available for access via the AuScope Discovery Portal
More than 400 industry geologists and students trained in NVCL
HyLogger is central to the MinEX CRC’s National Drilling Initiative
Corescan’s commercialisation of HyLogger has led to overseas interest and deployment
State and Territory Geological Surveys continue to fund the maintenance and operations of
NVCL, publish results, and train staff with support from the CSIROHyLoggers can process 700m of core per day with 55% reduced analysis cost than whole-rock geochemistry
Over 35 NVCL enabled journal publications with over 300 citations, over 140 publicly available reports, and over 200 conference presentations using NVCL datasets
3,055 datasets have been accessed via AuScope's Discovery Portal from Q1-FY16 to Q3-FY21
23,270 drill core images were downloaded from CorStruth webpage in the time frame 2016 to 2020 (calendar years)