Ann: Strong Results for Tanzanian Mineral Sands P, page-28

re: Ann: Strong Results for Tanzanian Mineral... Sharemadder, these are good questions, and were clearly seen as important. For that reason they were addressed, and the results reported to the market, last year.

Unlike most vanadium deposits, where the vanadium occurs in association with magnetite, and is difficult to separate, at Balama the vanadium is present as a mineral called roscoelite. Your geologist friend would be quite right if the vanadium was present as magnetite. But at Balama, it isn't.

Roscoelite is a type of mica, and, with an SG of approximately 2.7, separates completely from the graphite (SG = 2.2) at the first stage of flotation, and goes off with the gangue minerals for extraction of the vanadium. The vanadium is thus completely removed, and does not contaminate the graphite.

The chemistry of extracting vanadium from roscoelite has been known for a hundred years or so, and the metallurgical laboratory at Mintech (South Africa) have the job of deciding between alternative processes for this task.

Graphite is not traded on the LME. Price and quality are decided between buyer and seller, and obviously depend on the final application in any given case. Cdchi1 has pointed out the slick assumptions on price in the marketing presentation from Mason Graphite. We have seen similar smoke-dream extrapolations in Australia. On Tobyjack's favorite forum, here on HC, (I won't name it - work it out) posters have projected that, because a few kilograms can command a high price, therefore the entire production from a mine will be sold at the same high price. In those famous words, you can tell them they're dreaming.

Don't get worried by Tobyjack's claims. Many of his statements are misleading; others are plain wrong. For example, Tobyjack knows full well that the graphite will be concentrated on site, but tries to muddy the water by pretending otherwise.

Cheers, Prime1