A-Team Quarterly Update – Third Quarter 2020

It has been an important quarter with several important manuscripts moving forwards into the public domain. It has seen the publication of major papers by Anouk Borst and Will Hutchison as well as EPSRC grant success for Nicky Horsburgh. This has been a particularly productive time for Tim Kinnaird, whose research group focussing on landscape …

Will’s Modelling of Sulfur Isotopes Paper published

Will Hutchison's paper with his co-authors, which looks comprehensively at the modelling of sulfur isotopes, has just been published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. This work builds upon his successful publication in Nature Communications which put forwards a hypothesis that sulfur was cycled through the Earth's mantle. Left - Will and Adrian in Motzfeldt with …

New Sources for Rare Metals Vital to Modern Technology – New Paper on Rare-Earth bearing Clay Deposits published by Anouk

Modern technologies, such as those producing green energy from renewable resources like wind and water, require many tonnes of rare, so-called e-tech metals. Mining of e-tech metals can be costly, environmentally challenging and energy intensive. Most of the world's high-value 'heavy' rare earths are found in 'Ion Adsorption Deposits' in Southern China, but so far …

A-team Quarterly Update – Second Quarter 2020

It has been one of the strangest quarters that any of us have experienced, but it has also been one of the most productive with several manuscripts submitted (awaiting review) along with many datasets processed, now moving forwards towards the public domain. We have also welcomed a new member of the group - Dr Aayush …

REE induced defects in minerals: A Spectroscopic Study – PhD Thesis by Nicky Horsburgh

Nicky Horsburgh's PhD thesis has recently been accepted by the University of St Andrews following her successful defence, so congratulations to Dr Horsburgh. The purpose of the work was to explore the luminescence of rare earth-bearing minerals as a tool for smart sorting. She was able to show that most rare-earth ore minerals can be …

A-team Quarterly Update – First Quarter 2020

It has been a strange time for the research group, ending with the new norm of social distancing and lockdown in the UK, but it has nevertheless been a successful quarter. This period has also seen the end of two major SoS RARE and HiTech AlkCarb consortia, and the process of developing the legacy of …

A-team Quarterly Update – Final Quarter 2019

It has been a period of writing up following our successful publications and fieldwork in the Summer and approaching the end of the SoS RARE and HiTech AlkCarb consortia. The two consortia had valedictory conferences at which some of the key findings were presented. In addition, our work was picked up by several national newspapers …

Public Lecture – From Nansen to the Polar Academy

This is an invitation to the Polar Academy event at St Andrews on the 23rd of January 2020. There will be a talk entitled "From Nansen to the Polar Academy - the Past, Present and Future of Greenland Exploration from Fife" led by Adrian Finch and members of his research group. We will talk about …

Anouk’s paper on REE in Eudialyte published

Eudialyte is potentially one of the most important sources of lanthanides, particularly high-value heavy rare earths such as Dy, Tb and Y. Furthermore, it is a mineral that occurs in deposits in several locations in Europe, potentially providing European sources for these critical metals. Anouk Borst's paper on the structural state of lanthanides and yttrium …

Report of our visit to Angola covered by the Applied Mineralogy group

Our recent visit to Angola has been covered by the bulletin of the Applied Mineralogy group. The issue also includes reports by Nicky Horsburgh and Kris Sokół on their presentations to SEG 2019 in Glasgow, which was partly funded by the AMG. Our Angolan work continues to attract favourable attention. Anouk presented a poster to …