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Mount Ridley Mines says initial metallurgical testing of its proprietary Selectro process has delivered a major boost in recoveries of heavy rare earth elements, scandium and gallium from material at its Grass Patch Complex in Western Australia.
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The company said the in-house developed leach process achieved materially higher recoveries than conventional hydrochloric acid leaching on the same composite sample, with the results providing an early indication that multiple critical minerals could potentially be recovered through a single processing circuit.
The testwork was carried out by independent Perth metallurgical laboratory Nagrom using historical drill samples from the Grass Patch Complex.
For heavy rare earth elements, Selectro delivered recoveries of between 77% and 83% across dysprosium, terbium, yttrium, erbium, europium, gadolinium and holmium. The process also delivered an 80% recovery for scandium, significantly above the approximately 25% recovery achieved using HCl on the same sample.
Mount Ridley said the company intends to focus further work on improving scandium recovery through reagent and process optimisation.
Gallium provided another significant difference between the two processes. Selectro achieved average gallium recovery of 56%, while the HCl baseline recovered no gallium from the comparative testing.
Mount Ridley said the ability to potentially recover gallium alongside rare earths and scandium through the same leach process could provide an additional commercial opportunity.
The next phase will involve testing Selectro on a bulk sample from Grass Patch. Following encouraging results from recent mineralogical analysis, Mount Ridley will also test beneficiated material, with flotation to be applied to part of the bulk sample before leaching.
The company also plans to test the Selectro process on third-party feed as it assesses whether the technology could have applications beyond the Grass Patch deposit.
Mount Ridley said the process may have potential across a range of deposit types, including lateritic and sedimentary-hosted systems, and is assessing potential third-party licensing opportunities globally.
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