how can elm dig their potash out?

Denpal you said in an earlier post:
ELM cross-section - just look at the thickness of the carnallite!! 100m or so.

ELM haven?t claimed any significant K content in those layers.

Plainly diluted by excess halite (NaCl)

carnallite is KMgCl3 + NaCl. But ratio of NaCl to rest is variable.


Dunno why your flagging the carnallite????????

But anyway mate, you and others are missing the critical point re problem in mining this sucker.

Let me try and explain.

After each layer of potash is extracted, the roof above must be able to support 240 m of overburden.

You could get the usual 30% out of the uppermost layer by leaving the required number of pillars in place using conventional mining.

But the prob is that each of the 4 layers of potash below the top one is only separated by 5 ? 10 m of halite.

So if you tried to extract 30% out of 2nd top layer you will have a thin roof 5 m or so thick of halite needing to support the same grillion tonnes of 240m of dirt!!

Remember the roof of lower layers is same halite bed as the floor in cavern above it!!

Using solution mining poses another problem posters are ignoring.

This is due to the presence of water soluble halite above and below each potash layer.

The problem is how to selectively dissolve just the potash layer?

The roof and floor will also be dissolved with inevitable cave in problems.

How can you control which layers get dissolved and the extent to which each is dissolved ?

Remember, this process is controlled remotely - at the surface.

I suspect that it is not fully appreciated that potash deposits are unlike gold etc in that the horizontal spread of such deposits extend for K not metres and roof support over such huge areas is the problem.

If you are new to this stuff, do yourself and your investment funds a favour, go to an authoritive document on potash solution mining at around P80 at

http://www.potash1.ca/i/pdf/602-06-43-101-10-12-10-Revised-11-10-10.pdf

Have ELM given any detail re how they propose to get all 4 layers out?

Ive seen ELM use the phrase low cost mining but no detail.

I truly do not understand why shareholders funds are being spent further exploring this deposit without first explaining to shareholders how they plan to get this stuff out at an economic cost.