Date: Jan 29, 2019
ASX listed Venus Metals is looking positive on the vanadium front after metallurgical leach extraction sighter test work of oxidised ore samples from its Youanmi project near Sandstone in WA, returned encouraging recoveries of the valuable battery metal.
The latest results on a 48kg composite sample taken from 5 historical diamond drill cores, showed vanadium pentoxide recoveries of 81.6% of ore materials crushed to less than 1mm size, producing a grade of 0.47% vanadium pentoxide.
For the finer crushed materials below 1mm size but above 0.75mm size, a 79.9% recovery of the head vanadium pentoxide grade was achieved, at an impressive assayed grade of 0.6% vanadium pentoxide.
The leach extraction trials also rejected more than 40% of the mass of the waste materials.
According to the company, this preliminary work shows that the oxide ores are amenable to beneficiation and the outcomes were better than the initial results reported back in September.
The extraction technique involves leaching the crushed composite samples over a 24-hour period using concentrated sulphuric acid heated to 80 degrees Celsius.
According to Venus, the use of multiple acid leaching systems may be capable of enhancing the extraction recoveries even further.
Venus’ metallurgical contractor METS is now completing further studies to optimise the appropriate processing flowsheet to underwrite the scoping study for the Youanmi vanadium project.
This work will involve linking the geological and metallurgical characteristics of the oxidised ores in order to further tweak the ongoing test work.
