From what in figure out the size range continuum is below:
- >10mm - ore crushing smaller will typically result in better DMS performance unless the Spodumene crystals are not just coarse but massive
- 0.85mm to 10mm normal operational range for DMS in a spodumene processing context
- 0.5mm to 0.85mm operational range that DMS can work for but for reasons I don't fully understand are avoided in some company Scoping studies
- 0.2mm to 0.5mm (200 to 500um) limited options exist but watch WC8 as they are exploring flotation sizes above 212um
- 0.025mm to 0.2mm (25 to 200um) Typically quoted flotation range
- Below 25um - Called slimes and too small for even flotation (and I'm not that confident in the 25 size, some companies may set it higher).
So when you get crushing fines below 0.5mm there are options. The primary one is to screen out the fines that are already a suitable size for flotation and then crush the ore in the 200-500um range a little more so its falls into the 25-200um range. This material could then be put through a flotation plant. This is sometimes referenced as back-end flotation because some of the material processed would be DMS middlings - the blue and orange lines below. The flow sheet below is the basic setup when DMS + Flotation is being referenced (although at the start the crush size is often 6.3mm or 10mm). Look for A11, CXO and GT1 for back-end flotation plant scoping studies as all of these companies have indicated investigations on this and something may appear from at least one of them in the next 6 months.
This WC8 test flow sheet is the sort of flow sheet I'm expecting TG6 to arrive at. WC8 appears likely to go whole of ore flotation but needed to test DMS as part of the flow sheet.
Other optionsLRS has a spiral concentrator for fines that concentrates to an SC3.0 product. I haven't seen that in other companies, probably because it doesn't generate SC5-SC6 product. It will be interesting to see whether LRS's thinking remains the same as that project progresses through to DFS. There are financial and marketing benefits of producing a product from fines, even if its only a 3% concentrate because you now have more concentrate outputs meaning a larger divisor when calculating C1. The larger divisor means a lower reported C1 cost.
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