- King River Resources (KRR) has found a breakthrough in the refining process on its Speewah Specialty Metals Project
- The refining process has now precipitated aluminium as an intermediate product from which 99.98 per cent HPA has been produced
- Testwork in the coming weeks will examine the potential of the new HPA process to also extract Alumina from the waste fraction generated at the concentrate stage of the process
- On market close, King River is up 31 per cent and selling shares for 2.5¢ apiece
King River Resources (KRR) has updated the market on its pre-feasibility study (PFS) on its Speewah Specialty Metals Project in the East Kimberley of Western Australia.
The company has been examining a new process route to produce high purity alumina (HPA), vanadium pentoxide, titanium dioxide pigment and iron oxide products in a re-scaled operation for the PFS.
King River has made a breakthrough by extracting aluminium directly from vanadium, titanium, iron, aluminium and magnesium.
The refining process has now precipitated aluminium as an intermediate product from which 99.98 per cent HPA has been produced.
In the coming weeks, testwork will be able to examine the potential for the new HPA process to also extract alumina from the waste fraction generated at the concentrate stage of the process.
The grade of aluminium in the ROM material is 12.7 per cent aluminium oxide, the magnetic concentrates (30 per cent of mined volumes) which typically graded approximately 7 per cent of aluminium oxide.
The waste fraction is expected to be largely devoid of iron, titanium and vanadium that are acid consuming in the leaching process.
“This further process modification may provide the added advantage for a smaller scale start-up SMM project and its future scalability of V, Ti and Fe production in proportion to prices and demand,” the company told the market.
King River says it appreciates the frustration and disappointment expressed by its shareholders with the delays in completing the PFS.
“The change of project focus towards extracting HPA and the redesign of the process route may deliver valuable improvements to project economics and prove worthy of these delays,” it added.
On market close, King River is up 31 per cent and selling shares for 2.5¢ apiece.