Australian Vanadium (AVL) has returned high-purity vanadium pentoxide during a benchmark metallurgical test work program at its Western Australian project.
The results identified improvements to the pre-feasibility study (PFS) design and show that higher vanadium recoveries and lower reagent usage can be anticipated in the planned pilot scale testing.
AVL’s pre-pilot test work also revealed the company is capable of producing vanadium pentoxide of 99.4 per cent purity, which it reports is comparable to standard products from existing global producers.
Managing director Vincent Algar said the test work gave the company confidence that its project was capable of producing high quality resources.
“With the first production of a producer-peer comparable high-purity product and the significant process improvements identified, our confidence increases further as we continue to improve and derisk the project with each step forward,” Algar said.
AVL’s process for the metallurgical test work program begins through physical crushing, milling and magnetic separation of ore to make a concentrated product.
This is followed by a soda ash roast and further refining to produce a high-quality vanadium pentoxide product, which reportedly constitutes typical alkaline roast leach refining for vanadium processing.
Roasting tests were performed on magnetic concentrate that had been pelletised using a binder. Roasting at optimised temperature and reagent conditions revealed a vanadium roast leach extraction of 94 per cent, which was a substantial increase from 88 per cent without pelletising.
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