FPX Nickel Corp (CVE:FPX) has announced the initiation of a metallurgical pilot test program to support development of its Baptiste nickel project in central British Columbia, the largest and most comprehensive program conducted at the site to date.
The program is designed to validate and optimize the flowsheet parameters outlined in the company’s September 2020 Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA). The processing flowsheet developed for the PEA is based on conventional grinding, magnetic separation and flotation processes to produce a concentrate grading 63% nickel and 1% cobalt.
“This year’s bench- and pilot-scale metallurgical studies are focused on confirming and improving upon the results of previous bench-scale testing conducted in support of the 2020 PEA,” FPX Nickel CEO Martin Turenne said in a statement. “We have identified opportunities to improve several aspects of the metallurgical process at Baptiste which have the potential to increase recoveries and/or lower processing costs, and also to generate saleable iron and cobalt by-products which could materially improve the Project’s economics.”
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The PEA flowsheet also produces a magnetite-rich tailings stream, which has the potential to be sold or further valorized as a saleable iron ore product, the company said. No by-product revenues were recognized for the sale of this magnetite-rich iron ore product, but the company believes that additional testing and market evaluations could support the inclusion of this product stream.
Previous testing and market evaluations have demonstrated that this clean, high-grade nickel concentrate could be an excellent feedstock for direct sale to end-users in the stainless steel and electric vehicle (EV) battery sectors, the company added.
The objective of the 2021 metallurgical test program is to support the eventual production of a Preliminary Feasibility Study (PFS) for the project. Testing is intended to achieve the following:
- Confirm the PEA metallurgical results using materials representative of the life-of-mine production
- Expand the grindability and comminution parameter database, including conducting pilot-scale tests of the high-pressure grinding rolls ( HPGR) circuit
- Confirm primary grade-recovery relationships defined by previous test work
- Confirm and optimize flotation parameters and nickel recoveries, and investigate possible improvements to the flotation process design
- Produce sufficient high-grade nickel concentrate for additional testing to produce nickel sulphate for the EV battery market
- Conduct mineralogical and particle size evaluations of the magnetite iron ore by-product to support further market evaluations of this product stream
- Generate baseline data on tailings characterization and settling characteristics
FPX Nickel expects to report results from the program in the third quarter of 2021.
The Baptiste deposit is contained within the company's Decar nickel district, which is a two-hour drive from Fort St. James in British Columbia. Of the four targets in the Decar district, the Baptiste deposit has been the main focus of diamond drilling since 2010, with a total of 82 holes and over 31,000 metres of drilling completed.
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