Chemostrat
Technology
Chemostrat are the only chemostratigraphy service provider able to offer ICP-OES, ICP-MS, WD-XRF, ED-XRF and LIBS analytical options to our customers. This analytical flexibility ensures our clients an optimized and cost-effective analytical regime to suit their individual project needs.
ICP-OES and ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission and Mass Spectroscopy)
Advantages:
- Requires minimal sample volume (c.0.25g), especially favorable when dealing with archived washed and dried cutting samples.
- Superior analytical thresholds for very clean sandstones, in resolving low abundance trace elements.
- Provides data for major and high-abundance trace elements (ICP-OES) and ultra-trace elements, including the precious metals and REEs (ICP-MS).
Disadvantages:
- Time consuming sample preparation, either using acid digestion or alkai fusion.
- Full element array often not required.
- Several key elements not obtained, e.g. S, Cl and Br.
WD-XRF and ED-XRF (Energy Dispersive and Wave Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence)
Advantages:
- Quick and simple sample preparation, either fused bead or pressed pellet.
- Provides data for S, Cl and Br enabling redox and environmental modeling in evaporitic sequences.
- High precision data.
Disadvantages:
- Requires >4g and ideally 4-6g.
- Detection limits on key lements is too high for clean lithologies.
- Lacks rare earth element array obtained by ICP.
WELLSITE INSTRUMENTATION
- ED-XRF (Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence).
- LIBS (Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometry).
X-RAY DIFFRACTION
- In association with Ellington and Associates, we supply full XRD services, based around the Bruker D4 Endeavor with the LynxEye Silicon Detector we supply rapid turn-around times at a competitive per sample cost.
HOTSHOT SERVICES
- We can offer a rapid turn-around hotshot services using ICP or XRF in Wales and XRF in Houston.
Data quality for interpretations is also important and we adhere to strict QA/QC procedures controlled running rock standards of known compositions at the start and end of each batch to correct for machine drift.