Date: Nov 19, 2018
While the new bottle roll and vat/column leach test work program is still at an early stage, the initial results are encouraging.
King River Copper Ltd (ASX:KRC) has extracted 71% vanadium from the bottle roll test work on gabbro rock crushed to 5.6 millimetre lumps from its Speewah Vanadium Project in Western Australia.
The results support an alternative development plan for the Speewah vanadium-titanium-iron project.
King River’s recently reported scoping study demonstrated a viable business case with a healthy cash flow margin for a future development.
This was based on conventional on-site beneficiation of fine-grained concentrate and hydrochloric acid leach-solvent extraction refining at Wyndham producing vanadium pentoxide, titanium oxide and iron products.
While King River was encouraged by the results of the scoping study using these conventional processing methods, the company is committed to examining potentially lower capital and operating cost project development strategies that may also deliver a shorter development timeline.
The potential of using a coarse 2 millimetre concentrate for a heap or vat leach operation is now under revue as test results demonstrate it would reduce the amount of material leached by about 50% and potentially shorten leach times.
The photographs show lump magnetite gabbro before and after the 45-day bottle roll acid leach
