Barkly Rare Earths (ASX:BAK) has received $100,000 from the Northern Territory Government to advance metallurgical test work at its flagship rare earths project.
The company has been awarded the funding under round 19 of the Northern Territory Government’s Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations (GDC) program.
The $100,000 GDC grant matches Barkly’s commitment to fund the campaign on a dollar-for-dollar basis.
Auralia Metallurgy has commenced beneficiation test work to evaluate opportunities to upgrade Barkly mineralisation into a rare-earth mineral concentrate.
The work will assess flotation and associated beneficiation techniques, plus evaluate concentrate grade, rare earth recovery, and mass yield characteristics.
Specialised Metallurgical Services has commenced hydrometallurgical sighter test work to evaluate potential rare-earth extraction pathways for Barkly mineralisation and beneficiation products.
Testing a range of conditions allows the campaign to establish preliminary extraction characteristics and flag promising processing routes for future evaluation.
Additional samples selected from the upcoming 10,000m drilling program will also be used in the co-funded metallurgical campaign.
Located 350km northeast of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, the Barkly Project has an initial inferred mineral resource of 40 million tonnes at 710 parts per million (ppm) magnet rare earth oxide (MREO), within 2,100 ppm total rare earth oxide (TREO).
Initial conventional leaching tests achieved 74% MREO extraction, with initial beneficiation test work returning a mineral concentrate of 29,000 ppm TREO.
Write to JC Villarba at Mining.com.au
Images: Barkly Rare Earths
