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Peak Resources Achieves Breakthrough In Beneficiation For Ngualla Rare Earth Project
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Friday, November 30, 2012:
Peak Resources Limited ("Peak" or "the Company") (ASX: PEK) (OTCQX: PKRLY), the developer of a potentially low cost, long term rare earth project in Tanzania, today announced that it has developed a process to physically upgrade the rare earth mineralization from its Ngualla Project in Tanzania, resulting in reduced capital and operating costs.
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Using a combination of Wet High Gradient Magnetic Separation (WHGMS) and a specialized flotation regime, it has been successfully demonstrated that 38% of the plant feed can be rejected prior to acid leaching, resulting in only 5% loss in the rare earth content.
The beneficiation process, together with a simple sulphuric acid leach using acid produced on site, supports the Company's vision that its 100% owned project will be a low-cost, long term rare earth producer. The physical upgrade process will be included in the Scoping Study in December 2012.
Richard Beazley, Managing Director of Peak Resources said, "This achievement is a very important breakthrough by Peak's Technical Team. We have always said we intend to be a low cost producer and the physical upgrade will contribute significantly to achieving this. We have a high grade deposit, the mineralization is shallow, has excellent metallurgical characteristics. With this physical upgrade and the forthcoming Scoping Study, we believe Peak is very well placed to continue hitting our milestones."
Technical Report
Beneficiation tests were completed on a composite sample of mineralised intervals from diamond drill hole NDD007 within the highly weathered portion of the SREZ targeted for first production.
Detailed mineralogy undertaken using QEMSCAN techniques on coarse crushed and screened feed samples identify native mineral sizes and associations. Results show an intimate association between iron oxide and rare earth minerals (hematite and bastnaesite). The gangue minerals of barite and silica generally do not contain rare earth inclusions and have discrete grain boundaries with bastnaesite, indicating that grinding will separate these minerals.
Stereo microscope images of the feed mineralization after grinding to less than 106 microns clearly illustrate discrete separated particles of iron oxides, barite and silica (Figure 2).
The ground feed was subjected to wet magnetic separation (WHGMS) at increasing field strengths. The resulting non-magnetic stream was subjected to a program of flotation test work directed at recovering rare earth minerals whilst rejecting barite and silica. This process proved effective at rejecting the non-magnetic barite and silica fraction, which comprises 38% of the original feed but only 5% of the rare earths. The process is shown diagrammatically in Figure 1.
The successful proving of an effective beneficiation process that removes a significant proportion of feed mineralization with minimal loss of rare earths will reduce capital and operating costs by:
Reducing the size of the onsite sulphuric acid plant and leaching circuit of the processing plant (lower capital costs), and
Lower sulphuric acid consumption -- the major contributor to reagent and operating costs.
The beneficiation process enhances the economics of the Ngualla operation and will be included in the Ngualla Scoping Study, which is on track for completion by mid-December 2012.
Work is already in progress to further optimize this beneficiation process for input into feasibility studies due to commence in early 2013.
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