WIN Metals successfully extracts valuable rubidium from Faraday

• Initial bench-scale roast-leach testwork achieved 93.8% to 96.7% rubidium extraction
• Physical separation methods achieved three to five fold upgrade in rubidium grade
• Rubidium a critical mineral in the US and Japan
• Potential byproducts include a 6.7% Li2O spodumene concentrate,

WIN Metals (ASX: WIN) is seeking a potential downstream offtake partner after obtaining positive metallurgical testwork results the Faraday Critical Minerals Project in WA.

Testing on master composite sample of pegmatite mineralisation has confirmed potential to generate rubidium concentrates and found that the pegmatites are amenable to roast leach extraction.

“The staged evaluation of our Faraday/Trainline resource is unveiling more than just lithium as a source of value with this important milestone identifying a significant additional value driver which has the potential to make the lithium endowment only a minor byproduct,” MD and CEO, Steve Norregaard, said.

“With this technical milestone passed a maiden rubidium resource can now be considered on the basis of ‘reasonable’ prospects for eventual economic extraction.

“The next milestones in our rubidium evaluation being to determine the potential upgrade in purity of the rubidium leach product to levels whereby premium valuations are attained.

“This is an extremely rare, extraordinarily high value commodity usually only sourced as a byproduct of lepidolite processing and is a new opportunity for a first mover in WIN.”

Prior metallurgical testwork to beneficiate spodumene from the Faraday and Trainline mineralisation identified elevated rubidium grades in certain tails streams and a strong potassium to rubidium relationship.

This finding provided the impetus for WIN to investigate the potential to upgrade and extract rubidium from the Faraday and Trainline pegmatite mineralisation.

Preliminary flowsheet development testwork has been undertaken at ALS Metallurgy in Perth and high-level objectives of the testwork were to firstly explore beneficiation options to upgrade rubidium to a concentrate and then demonstrate how the rubidium could potentially be extracted to a leach liquor.

Outside the primary focus of rubidium extraction some interesting findings have been realised during the beneficiation testwork program. These include:

• Spodumene is readily floated from the feldspar flotation tails and in preliminary sighter testing a 6.7% Li2O cleaner concentrate at 75% lithium recovery has been demonstrated, with low Fe presence (0.55% Fe)

• Elevated light rare earth element grades and niobium within heavier particles were contained within a wet high intensity magnetic concentrate currently separated as a tails stream to clean the feed to the flotation circuit. The magnetic stream represented approximately one per cent of the pegmatite composite sample.

• The potential to clean and generate a sodium dominant feldspar concentrate.

WIN is now undertaking geological modelling of the larger pegmatite system at Faraday to determine the size and grade of the rubidium endowment to support a mineral resource estimate.

The company is also seeking involvement from a downstream user/offtaker to partner with the company to further develop the flowsheet with a view to joint development and marketing of the product(s).

“The Faraday Critical Minerals Project represents a unique opportunity to harness a new critical commodity opportunity to complement the already established presence of the preferable spodumene dominant variant of lithium,” Mr Norregaard said.

WIN was up 4.76% to 2.2¢. Mkt cap $18.00M.

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