Date: Dec 7, 2018
U3O8 Corp. (TSX: UWE) (OTCQB: UWEFF) (“U3O8 Corp.” or the “Company“) is pleased to report initial results of test work on the extraction of uranium and vanadium from almost a metric tonne of mineralized gravel from the wholly-owned Laguna Salada deposit in Argentina.
The test work has been designed, and results monitored, by Mr. David Marsh, director of U3O8 Corp. whom, as former General Manager – Technical Project Development at Paladin Energy, was intimately involved in the design, construction and operation of two uranium production plants in Africa. This work represents a complete overhaul of the preliminary economic assessment (“PEA”) carried out by Tenova Mining and Minerals (Australia) Pty Ltd. in 2014. Mr. Marsh, with his vast practical experience, reviewed the PEA and felt that there was room for improvement and simplification of the flowsheet and processing plant design, resulting in potential to reduce estimated capital costs (“capex”) and operating costs (“opex”).
David Marsh commented, “I am delighted with the initial results from our test work on Laguna Salada gravel. The work program was designed to test ways of reducing estimated production costs by simplifying the former PEA process flow sheet. Our first step was to optimize the washing of the fine, uranium-vanadium – bearing material off the barren pebbles. The test results show that “scrubbing” the gravel for 5 minutes produces similar results as scrubbing for the 15 minutes modelled in the PEA. This two-thirds reduction in processing time could potentially reduce the cost of the associated equipment which was estimated at US$6.2 million in the PEA.”
“Our second step aimed to extract more of the uranium and vanadium contained in the gravel, and this proved successful with vanadium recovery increasing by 23%, and uranium marginally by 2%, over the PEA.”
