www.exeterresource.com
Exeter, a Canadian exploration company, controls 100% of the world class Caspiche gold-copper discovery in Chile. The Company has a treasury of $74 million and no debt.
Exeter reports positive metallurgical processing results from Caspiche project
Exeter Resource Corp (AMEX:XRA) (TSE:XRC) reported Tuesday positive results from a metallurgical test program on the company's Chile-based Caspiche project, used to identify methods to remove arsenic from copper-sulfide ore.
The results, which confirmed that two different processing technologies can be successfully applied to reduce arsenic from sulfide concentrates, will be used to develop capital costs for the oxide-sulfide pre-feasibility study, scheduled for release in the third quarter.
The study will be based on a model where gold and silver will be recovered from the surface oxide deposit by a heap leaching process, whereas gold, silver and copper will be recovered from the underlying sulfide deposit using industry standard flotation technology.
Today, the company reported that both reduction roasting and pressure oxidation technologies can be used to reduce or eliminate arsenic from the sulfide concentrates produced by flotation.
According to the testwork results, the roasting method showed arsenic levels were reduced to 0.2% arsenic - a level considered commercially acceptable in most smelter contracts, the company said.
Using pressure oxidation, testwork extracted 99% of the copper, leaving the arsenic as the residue mineral scorodite. Leaching of the residue also yielded gold dissolutions that averaged 96%.
"These results strongly suggest that high quality cathode copper and gold-silver bullion can be produced from a plant that uses pressure oxidation to treat concentrates, and the recoveries will be very high," the company said in a statement.
For the tests, the pilot plant recovered 75 kilograms of concentrate from approximately 10 metric tons of diamond drill core representative of Caspiche sulfide mineralization. The resulting concentrates assayed on average 23.5% copper, 35 g/t gold, 75 g/t silver and 2.4% arsenic.
The Caspiche project is situated in the Maricunga gold district, between Kinross' Refugio mine and the giant Cerro Casale gold deposit, owned by both Barrick and Kinross.
