JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Metallurgical testwork currently being carried out at BMR Group’s Kabwe project, in Zambia, is providing encouraging results with regard to the metal’s potential recovery and production from its tailings.
This, the company said on Friday, further bolstered BMR’s asset base.
The metallurgical testwork has shown that no modifications would be required to the acid brine leach section at the Kabwe plant to recover the vanadium from tailings and take it into solution as a by-product.
Selective recovery of the vanadium in solution has been successfully achieved during the zinc re-leach phase, requiring only minimal changes to the current flowsheet design.
Preliminary testwork results suggest an overall vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) recovery factor of about 65%, while the work continues to optimise the V2O5 recovery factor, to establish final product quality and the design of the process circuit to produce V2O5.
This will enable capital and operational expenditure costs to be established, of which the former will be at an additional construction cost to the company.
Approval to operate a V2O5 processing circuit should also only require an environmental project brief, which BMR intends to lodge in February with approval generally expected within four to six months.