Technology Metals Australia Ltd (ASX:TMT) tests have delivered exceptional vanadium recoveries of up to 97.8% from its Gabanintha project in Western Australia.
Tests also delivered weight recoveries of up to 85.6% at a grind size of 106 microns and concentrate grades exceeding 1.3% vanadium pentoxide.
Rejection of deleterious elements
There was also outstanding rejection of deleterious elements silica and alumina in very high-quality magnetic concentrate.
This is expected to be highly beneficial for efficient vanadium processing.
Results are from the first phases of a detailed metallurgical test work program on representative composite samples from diamond drilling.
The program has been designed to follow-up encouraging results from a preliminary round of test work on composite reverse circulation drill samples from drilling in March 2017.
It indicates that vanadium grade and recovery to a magnetic concentrate is not sensitive to grind size.
Test work is ongoing
Ongoing tests will assess metallurgical variability throughout the Northern Block Resource and downstream processing.
This will focus on the extraction of vanadium utilising the traditional salt roast/leach processing technique.
The project has an inferred resource of 62.8 million tonnes at 0.8% vanadium and 9.7% titanium.
Northern Block tenements are contiguous with the northern extent of Australian Vanadium Ltd’s (ASX:AVL) Gabanintha project resource and conceptual open pit.