Pan Asia Metals (ASX:PAM) reports it has received ‘exceptional’ recoveries from ore sorting as part of ongoing metallurgical testwork being conducted at the Reung Kiet Prospect in Thailand.
The company says the ore sorting sample is from drillhole RKDD006 comprising of half HQ core for the interval 54.5m to 81.5m was crushed at Nagrom in Perth and sized to 100% less than 50mm to over 10mm.
The sample zone (54.5m to 81.5m) contains a bulk mineralised intersection of 27m @ 0.48% Li2O, and geology through the intersection shows there is 9.95m in aggregate width of aplo-pegmatite at a weighted average grade of 0.95% Li2O ranging from 0.45% to 1.26% Li2O.
Pan Asia says the remainder of the intersection is siltstone with an average grade of 0.21% Li2O, ranging from 0.10% to 0.37% Li2O, and the weights grades versus the geology in this intersection indicates around 72% of contained lithium occurs in the aplo-pegmatite which represents about 37% of the intersection.
Pan Asia Metals Managing Director Paul Lock said when the company’s inaugural mineral resource estimate (MRE) was reported on June 28 2022, the company discussed the potential to increase the mill feed grade through ore sorting as in working with a 5m x 5m x 10m block model to define the MRE we capture a lot of low grade or waste siltstone in the block, diluting the overall grade of the MRE.
“Steinhart Australia’s ore sorting testwork has demonstrated the ability to uplift the head grade to the beneficiation plant, in this case almost doubling the grade to over 0.90% Li2O, which means that we could be processing a higher grade ore than reflected in our MRE.
This is a fantastic outcome and we expect it will result in capital and operating cost savings as we will require less beneficiation capacity, lower capex and we will be processing less product, lower opex”
This is a fantastic outcome and we expect it will result in capital and operating cost savings as we will require less beneficiation capacity, lower capex and we will be processing less product, lower opex.”
The company reports the drill core sample was crushed to less than 50mm, over 25mm and under 25mm over 10mm, and in the crushed core samples there is good physical separation of pegmatite, identified as purple and white from the siltstone which is dark grey to black in colour.
The crushed sample was tested at Steinhart Australia’s Test Centre in Perth, and after theoretical modelling, the company says the crushed samples were fed into a single-pass and subjected to 3D laser scanning and colour camera sensors used in combination.
Pan Asia comments this produced ‘excellent’ separation of the mineralised aplo-pegmatite from the low grade to waste siltstones, and the data indicates that the sorted under 50mm and over 10mm pegmatite and mixed under 10mm fines samples constituted about 39% of the sample yield and contain around 73% of the contained lithium
Conversely the siltstone sample constitutes around 61% of the sample yield but only 27% of contained lithium, being waste siltstone which Pan Asia says is below the current mineral resource cut-off grade of 0.25% Li2O.
This initial test demonstrates the sampled mineralisation is ‘highly’ amenable to ore sorting which results in the separation of the material into essentially homogeneous aplo-pegmatites with ‘little’ siltstone contamination and siltstone with ‘little’ pegmatite.
Pan Asia reports the sorted samples have been sent to Nagrom where crushing, sub-sampling and assaying will be undertaken to enable accurate analysis and deportment of results to be reported.
The Reung Kiet Lithium Project is a lepidolite style lithium project located around 70km northeast of Phuket in southern Thailand, and the company holds a 100% interest in 3 contiguous Special Prospecting Licences (SPL) and 1 Exclusive Prospecting Licence (EPL) covering about 40km-square.
Pan Asia Metals is a battery and critical metals explorer and developer focused on the identification and development of projects in Asia that have the potential to position the company to produce metal compounds and other ‘high-demand’ products.
The company owns 2 lithium projects and 1 tungsten project in Thailand.
Images: Pan Asia Metals Ltd & iStock
