Although metallurgical testwork remains ongoing, Viking Mines (ASX:VKA) says it has produced vanadium pentoxide flake for the first time at its Canegrass Battery Minerals Project in Western Australia.
The production of the vanadium pentoxide flake is considered a critical milestone as it demonstrates that the metallurgy is sufficient to produce “the highly valuable” vanadium found at Canegrass.
“The company will now proceed with roasting the remaining sample of magnetic concentrate to optimise and further purify and enhance the product,” Managing Director and CEO Julian Woodcock says.
“On advice received from our metallurgical consultants, we are refining the test plans with the knowledge obtained through the testwork completed so far to produce both a high-purity electrolyte and high-quality flake product targeting >99% purity V2O5 which attracts a premium price.”
Viking Mines, which has a market capitalisation of $10.25 million, says now that the industry standard process flowsheet has been tested, a process of refinement and optimisation has begun.
The stage three testwork is designed to produce concentrates of copper, nickel, cobalt, and titanium using various processing methods on both the magnetic concentrate and non-magnetic tail.
“With this next step in the testwork we are seeking to extract the maximum value from the inherent value we have in the project,” Woodcock adds.
Viking will begin roasting the remaining 5kg sample of magnetic concentrate from the stage two testwork program, followed by refining and optimising the roasting, leaching, and purification process to produce vanadium pentoxide flake through adjusting the quantities of reagents used.
Once completed, the company will begin compositing and magnetic separation on newly submitted samples for the stage three testwork program.
Sulphide flotation testwork will also begin on the non-magnetic tail, while also conducting testwork to separate the titanium from the iron to increase the grade of iron concentrate and produce a separate high titanium concentrate.
Viking says this will determine if higher quality saleable products can be produced.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Viking Mines
