Globe Metals & Mining (ASX: GBE) will soon commence pilot scale testing of a 40 tonne bulk sample from its Kanyika Niobium Project in Malawi to validate bench-scale testing results.
This will also validate engineering data for the plant design.
Initial confirmatory assays will be undertaken on the bulk sample selected from various domains of mineralisation.
A series of bench-scale verification tests will also be undertaken on various samples to confirm plant requirements and conditions prior to the commencement of the pilot plant.
The pilot plant testing schedule is due for completion by the end of June 2014 with the full final report from the institute in the third quarter of 2014.
Optimisation test-work undertaken at GZRINM in 2013 yielded improved metallurgical results for the Kanyika project.
This demonstrated that a cheaper and more robust reagent suite could be used for processing Kanyika mineralisation, resulting in a 5% increase in recovery to 75%.
The pilot scale testing will validate data from this bench-scale optimisation test-work prove process robustness and economics before proceeding to the next stage.
Kanyika has a current total Resource of 68.3 million tonnes at 2,830 Nb2O5 and 135ppm Ta2O5.
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