PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Diversified miner Independence Group has lodged a patent application for a new process to produce high quality nickel sulphate from nickel sulphide concentrate.

The company is currently undertaking a prefeasibility study on a downstream nickel sulphate operation at its Nova nickel/cobalt sulphide operation, in Western Australia, to supply the lithium-ion battery industry.

The company on Tuesday said that metal recoveries from its process have been extremely high, achieving extraction rates of more than 97% of both the nickel and cobalt metal in the Nova concentrate feed.

Based on the work completed to date, the company’s process was also low cost and well within the lowest quartile of the cost curve for the integrated production of nickel sulphate, Independence said.

Independence MD Peter Bradford told shareholders that the company had embraced the transformation of the resources industry to strategically focus on nickel and other metals critical to clean energy.

“Upstream we have expanded our generative and greenfields exploration to drive the discovery of new nickel and copper projects, to provide the nickel and copper world needs. Downstream, we are investing in innovative processing technologies to more efficiently produce nickel sulphate for electric vehicle batteries at a lower cost and in a more environmentally sustainable manner.”

Bradford said that further work remained to be done on the Independence process to optimise the design in order to minimise waste and maximise by-product credits.

“We also continue to do trade off studies to determine the optimum project location, with key drivers including access and availability of power, water, transportation options, workforce and environment and community considerations.

“We are excited by the results to date but plan to spend more time to test all strategic options for the study.”