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Electricity-slashing platinum game changer expected by December

Arne Frandsen

Photo by Duane Daws

Keith Liddell

Photo by Duane Daws

26th March 2015

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The target date is the end of this year for the decision to go ahead with the commercial implementation of a paradigm shift technology that will mine and refine platinum in an integrated on-site process and use only a tenth of the electricity normally consumed.

Major detail design work has already been completed on the Kell process, which unlocks significant capital by allowing an operation to go from mining to finished refined metal in the space of only a week, and huge strides have already been taken towards expanding its game-changing applicability beyond the South African platinum group metals (PGMs) sector alone into gold and other commodities.

Recovery of 99.9% of PGMs is being achieved in a scaled-up pilot plant at the JSE-listed Pallinghurst’s Sedibelo mine, near Rustenburg, and the patented technology that former Mintek researcher Keith Liddell has been developing for a decade-and-a-half is expected to be the catalyst that provides the potential for a Silicon Valley-type Platinum Valley, which is being strongly supported by the large near-mine shareholder community as well as Sedibelo’s sovereign Dutch, Singaporean and South African Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) shareholders.

“It’s truly an exciting story that has all the hallmarks of being a much-needed game changer for the industry,” said Pallinghurst CEO Arne Frandsen, who spoke to Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly Online in a global conference call in which Liddell outlined that a commercial PGMs plant would already be up and running had far larger industry demand not dictated the need for a much larger plant to accommodate third-party processing beyond PGMs alone.

Zimbabwe is currently planning to build a PGM smelter at a cost of $2-billion whereas building a Kell plant for Zimbabwe’s output would cost a tenth of that at $200-million.

“To build, it’ll cost a tenth of the normal cost, you’ll use between 10% and 15% of the usual electricity and your working capital normally tied up for long periods in all kinds of traditional processes will be rapidly released,” Frandsen explained.

Sedibelo is all about creating a platinum provider for the twenty-first century, shown by the direct ownership of 27% of the company by a trust for the benefit of 350 000 members of the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela community, which is as broad-based as one can get.

On top of that, there is not only a South African government shareholding in the form of the State-owned IDC, but also the Dutch government in the form of the blue-chip APG pension fund and the Singaporean government through the Tamasek sovereign fund – all of which are long-term investors.

The company has 100-million ounces in the ground, which will be at a relatively shallow and safe depth for the next 60 years.

Once pure metals are being produced, the manufacture of autocatalytic converters could be considered in the envisaged Platinum Valley, which would also have access to added value PGM products that go into various industries.

The Kell process removes the need to melt PGM concentrate at a high 1 600 oC temperature and instead consumes a mere 140 kWh of electricity for every ton of concentrate processed, compared with 1 000 kWh of electricity for every ton of concentrate smelted, recovering 99%-plus of the platinum and 98% of the remaining PGMs, as well as the base metals.

It requires no milling and emits only 440 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) a ton of concentrate treated, compared with 1 400 kg of CO2/t for the estimated two-million tons of concentrate treated in South Africa a year.

“It has enormous potential. It’s also something that we really need now as an industry as an alternative to the high consumption of electricity by the smelting process,” said Frandsen.

Sedibelo’s sole Southern African licence for the technology is expected to become a key component of its initial public offering (IPO).

The technology also copes well with the chromite in the upper group two reef, which smelting finds problematic, and the main reason Kell consumes so little power is that waste goes through the process without consuming any electricity.

“We’ve got the refining end for the PGMs sitting in Kell now, so you can actually go from mining to making the final major PGM products within a week of mining them.

“If you look at the pipeline, especially if you’re a seller of concentrate, it’s two to three months before you get the final payments and you’re exposed during those two to three months to any price and foreign exchange swings. That’s a big exposure for any company that sells concentrates,” Liddell explained.

That can now all be avoided with Kell, which uses standard, off-the-shelf PGM refining technology used at PGM refineries.

“It’s a really simple addition on to our flow sheet,” he added.

Kell’s additional area of development is the processing of gold, particularly the refractory orebodies found in the Eastern Bushveld, without using cyanide.

"We’ve actively branched the technology out, way beyond the South African PGM industry,” Liddell told Mining Weekly Online.

The first pilot plant at Sedibelo, which has been significantly upscaled, has confirmed all the data and is working exactly as predicted.

Flowing on from work done on South Africa’s rich Platreef orebodies in particular, Kell is being migrated to polymetallical orebodies in North America and around the world.

“There’s no major change in process needed for Kell to treat polymetallicals. It’s just a slight change of conditions. We’ve done a lot of testwork on these polymetallicals and find that they give the same high 99%-plus recovery responses to copper and nickel concentrates.

Kell is also able to reprocess recycled autocatalysts, again effectively replacing the high-energy smelting of autocatalysts and fitting in with Sedibelo’s philosophy of using Kell to recycle as much used metal as possible as a mix with primary ore to provide high concentration, which is seen as creating the backbone for the envisaged Platinum Valley.

The idea is to get the benefits of the entire PGMs value chain to flow into the South African economy.

Already, platinum, palladium and rhodium is being produced in bar form, allowing Pallinghurst’s Sedibelo to begin positioning itself for its IPO as the only integrated mine-to-metal PGMs producer at a tenth of the traditional electricity use.

Sedibelo could press the button tomorrow for a commercial Kell plant to produce PGM concentrate for itself but calculates that it makes far more sense to build a plant three times the size to treat the concentrate of many more in the area, including non-PGM concentrate.

The company completed a full feasibility study in 2013, and another last year on PGM concentrate alone, and the outcomes from that were described as being “pretty compelling”.

“That has given us the confidence to look at a far more expanded business model that goes beyond only PGMs,” Liddell disclosed.

The final integrated pilot plant runs are scheduled to be completed by September and the existing bankable studies are due to be updated with current costs by the end of the year.

“We’re looking at a decision to deploy the technology into Sedibelo by the end of the year. That’s the target that we’re all working to now,” Liddell told Mining Weekly Online.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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