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27/08/17
11:07
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Originally posted by Roundtable
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Having worked on and been associated with both the modern gold processing plants from 1986 there has always been a few fundamental considerations for the Nullagine region.
1. All mineralised ore below ~80m (transition and fresh ore zones) was subject to a number of complexities to allow effective recovery of gold bearing ore. In 1986 fine grinding and pressure leaching was used to help the leaching kinetics & liberation of the gold particles for effective dissolved and recovery of gold solution via convention Carbon in Pulp technology(CIP). This first modern mine was built by Minproc Engineers and was designed to target the sulphide underground refractory ore via a small 100 tpd underground mine about 2km to the west. The head grade extracted from this mine averaged between 30 - 45 g/t and the tailing residues ran between 2.o & 8.00 g/t. The plant flow sheet was bold complex and moderately successful.
Its fair to say generally that the whole region (across all pits mined through to the transitional and fresh ore that they all have the same complexity as each other.
2. The second issue for the region, and always the bottleneck was the limited ground water supply, and variable wet season rainfall. Needless to say water conservation was important. and hence thickening was also included in the flow sheet for water preservation. Now this is a very important point and i will come back to this.
When the latest mine was built by Brian Rear (now passed) and his very good team Millennium targeted the oxide and sulphide ore within acceptable metallurgical recoverable ore zones across all the pits. History lesson completed. MOY set out to discover and explore the whole regional goldfields and have been very successful exploration and discovering new deposits. Not withstanding that success each and everyone of the open cut pits have the exact same issue at depth and generally its into fresh and transitory ores where they pull up mining.
Circling back to the water issue - Millenium now has a series of open pits (stopped at the transitional & Fresh level) with the ability to redirect / harvest water in the wet and draw this back down in the dry to accommodate a larger processing plant.
It should be a very exciting period in the history of the Nullagine region.
I would be a little careful on unnecessary expenditure on an underground mine without a suitable flow sheet to support - could be the quickest way to go broke.
Last points - There is some really nasty ores zones associated with the stibnite that may not response to a conventional flowsheet. This stuff went came in at 30g/t and went out 8 to 10 g/t tailings residues.
Also some ores do not dewater so water consumption is crippling. Ive only ever seen this once in over 35 years. The Nullagine curse... First 2 mine suffered from it - no MOY has not ever treated this ore type.
Long diatribe - I will continue to watch MOY and wish all holders the very best for whats ahead of you.
Cheers
RT
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Thanks RT for stopping by here, really interesting observations in your assessment of MOY, I do hope Peter Cash is on top of all the water issues going forward
We look forward to you becoming a holder and joining in on the conversations here
We also look forward to continually hearing from Peter Cash just as he has been doing, maybe he can tell us his take on the water issues and his plans going forward soon
Yes, very exciting times ahead for us indeed
Thanks again RT and good luck to all