Surefire Resources NL (ASX:SRN) has delivered a maiden mineral resource estimate (MRE) of 38 million tonnes of aluminium oxide for its Victory Bore Project in Western Australia, highlighting the high-purity alumina (HPA) potential of the project.
The MRE stands to bolster the value of the project in preparation for an economic pre-feasibility study assessment targeted for delivery November this year.
This aluminium resource estimation is in addition to the current Victory Bore’s vanadium MRE of 321 million tonnes at 0.40% vanadium.
Furthermore, Surefire is testing the extraction of 4N HPA from Victory Bore feedstock for potential inclusion in the upcoming pre-feasibility studies for the project.
HPA potential
The maiden resource estimate has 17 million tonnes at 23.1% aluminium oxide in a near-surface measured and indicated component.
HPA – a type of aluminium oxide at 99.99% purity – is a high-value critical mineral that is important for the industrial sector, given its use in creating synthetic sapphire crystals used in LED lights, semiconductors, watch faces and smartphones.
Potential future mining at Victory Bore will likely produce minimum quantities of waste as vanadium and aluminium ores are mutually exclusive in the deposit.
Magnetic beneficiation can remove the aluminium from the magnetite and conversely remove the magnetite from the aluminium.
Pre-feasibility study
Initial test-work, including leaching and concentration of liquor, has been completed.
To date, Aluminium Chloride Hexahydrate (ACH) has been produced from leachate.
Following recrystallization, ACH was analysed as being 99.8% purity.
Lava Blue is now assessing contaminant control strategies and plans to produce 4N HPA samples following the next phase of test work.
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