Yes it would be an awful waste but lets take a look anyway. Close to 22% of copper in the native copper zone is in a sulphide form that would be lost . Of the remaining native copper these are the fractions sizes -1mm (25.96%) +1/-4mm (19.02%) +4/-8mm (40%) +8/-40mm (7.49%) +40mm (7.25%) from a 83 mm core since they have started mining its been reported that + 40 mm fractions are making up 25% of the nuggets. With the larger faction size now making up a larger percent and without going to far into the mathematics I think the -1 mm fraction will still make up probably 20%, so using those figures 37.6% of contained copper would be lost with no flotation circuit. Which is a considerable amount.
If the 40 mm nuggets are scalped off via the crushing circuit 19.5% of the copper in the ore is recovered. Using that figure and the 37.6% which flotation takes care of means the gravity jig recovers 42.9% of the copper. So Harry hindsight being the wonderful thing it is means 62.4% of the copper can be recovered via the crusher and gravity circuit which gives merit to your concept.
Now the wild card here is the ore sorter, the bulk test sorter processed +40/-110mm fractions with outstanding results but they now want the 200 tph model to process -40mm fractions. Without results to go by on this size it really a guessing game but even if it only 5% on copper recovered and can see plenty of potential income with just the crushing plant operational with possible recovery of roughly 25% of copper content in the ore which still allows for dry stacking of the remainder meaning no wastage until the concentrating circuit comes online.
CDU Price at posting:
$1.14 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
