- Significant increases in vanadium recovery at Pursuit’s Airijoki Project
- Overall recoveries of vanadium over 70 per cent
- One of the highest-grade vanadium magnetite concentrate projects globally
Pursuit Minerals has achieved significant increases in vanadium recovery rates and delivered further improvements in potential economic returns at its high-grade Airijoki Project in Sweden.
These improvements were achieved through metallurgical test work and were conducted on three holes at Airijoki to focus on ways to increase the mass recovery of the vanadium magnetite concentrate.
This work increased the mass average recovery from 13.3 per cent to 22 per cent and the average recovery of vanadium into vanadium concentrate is in excess of 70 per cent.
The improvements were achieved through the use of low- intensity magnetic separation (LIMS) and used a coarser 355-micron grind size rather than the previous 106-micron grind size.
Airijoki hosts an inferred mineral resource of 44.3 million tonnes, which contains 5.9 million tonnes of magnetite at 1.7 per cent vanadium pentoxide in magnetite concentrate.
Increasing the mass recovery resulted in the substantial increase of vanadium bearing magnetic minerals able to be recovered and the improved economics of the project.
LIMS test works were conducted at ALS Metallurgy in Perth with three drill core samples being examined. Results showed that as the grind size increase so did the mass recovery and vanadium recovery.
In order to recover more vanadium the non-magnetic tailings from the LIMS test were subject to high magnetic field strengths in West High Intensity Magnetic Separation (WHIMS).
Approximately half of the remaining could be recovered using 10,000 Guass WHIMS however, the high magnetic field resulted in large amounts go weak magnetic titanium oxides.
The increased recoveries will further deliver substantial improvements to the economics of Airijoki with its recent scoping study showing its potentially financially robust future.