Hi All,
Firstly thank you for the tags and also the kind words. I have responded to this post but will also incorporate responses to answer a few other queries. However this post was probably hits the so what on the hit.
Grade, thickness and depth are in the realms of what you need to see. Not indifferent to what i commented in Post #:
64182949
So the results continue to deliver in line with previous results which is positive.
Nothing really changed in my view in regards to a major de-risking announcement which will now almost entirely be based on the met work.
"if you can recover a decent percentage under sighter test work using neutral or low ph without an excessive acid consumption rate it begins to look economic. if the deposit has little ionic or colloidal REO's present then it's curtains."
Post #:
64189174
Post #:
64204546
Probably answer everything that needs to be explained in regards to what needs to be seen in the met work, why aqua regia (imo) is fairly useless as a test basis to determine economic viability. In today's announcement you'll note the aqua regia was written as ("weak"). That should be insight to what i'm telling people that weak aqua regia is not "(weak)".
Anyway. I sound like a broken record but i'll go one further to shed some light that i am consistent in my views even on stocks i hold. Recently a stock i held which actually has proven it has ionic material (1 of 4 on the asx) released met results on a tenement whereby they actually performed the leach testing required. Both ones at a high and low PH. I went on HC and basically said that the results they got (even though it again proven it was ionic were probably too low to even be economic. Post #:
64140169. They now have screened out -45um material which lowers the calcium content significantly (which decreases acid consumption) but there may be adverse impact when trying to process a by-product on a lower tonnage HPA product. I degress.
So there are 2 announcement to come from TAR that are the ones i'd care about.
Now if i was a serious holder here i'd be calling the company and asking about what kind of leach test they are doing. If they're leaching this with Ph1 or below they're almost wasting their time. Why that's generally very acidic (almost as acidic as weak aqua regia - but atleast a leach test). If they want to understand how much material is ionic the
leach needs to be under a neutral ph using monovalent salts.
This part also interest me - but the timeline obviously quite open. So hard to now what info will come when but would appear that late November they're will be indication (hopefully if the right leach is done) and then more news after that. What you also want to see in any results is of course the PH used, the acid consumption and yes the recovery.
Now to debunk a few other items.
They are confident. Yep so is 99% of other directors on the asx about their stocks. I would not read into that at all nor do i with stocks i hold.
Thorium and Uranium. Deleterious = Yes. Important in ionic clays? usually no.
The reason why these elements are typically problematic in REO processing is because usually they're being considered in a hard rock processing methodology. THe difference is typically the rare earth oxide grade along with the thorium and uranium is concentrated all the way to the final stage.
What do i mean. Imagine a 1% TREO grade stock with say 1% uranium/thorium. (Totally ridiculous but easy math for analogy.)
In a hard rock project you process the 1% TREO from the ground into a 40% concentrate. Now 40% TREO.
The deleterious elements are generally upgraded at the same rate. so now 40%. (i reiterate you would not find thorium/uranium at these rates ok but just for explanations.) Now those elements are a biggg problem because they're now at a 40% concentration level holy hell.
In ionic clays (because the dominant methodology is a cation exchange) most of the REO is liberated without the thorium/uranium coming with it.
Meaning a .1% TREO in ionic clay could have .1% thorium uranium (1000ppm) btw that would be very high. But when you beneficiate ionic clay you go from .1% to 90%+ which ~ 900 times upgrade. The thorium and uranium basically stay close to their in ground ppm as they find their way down the process circuit.
https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/m...loy/metals-10-01524-v2.pdf?version=1605667309
The above is a good paper which explains processing of various reo material and how the uranium/thorium should be considered moving through it.
https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/49/034/49034222.pdf very detailed around impacts (big document)
this is a good paper which also talks about not all reo in clays are the same.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17801-5
The bad name of ionic clays being an environmental accident waiting to happen is actually due to the processing method used by some chinese miners in the past. You have in-situ and heap leaching. In situ is where you essentially dose the ground with acid which releases the stuff you're trying to process. Obviously pouring lots of acid into the ground aint great nor is doing the same with the tailing. Heap leaching is whereby the you have a literal (heap) of dirt in a contained area (non permeable) and leach with acid. Tailings only go back once they've underwent relevant filtering and deemed safe to redistribute back to environment. If you looks at advanced ionic clay projects you'll see they're basically a water purifier using technology to clean the tailings.
In regards to the overall resource size, it's going to need a fairly big extensive to be a mineable resource size.
I mean "extending strike" when there's not a single result between 2km's is fair long bow to draw to suggest there's going to be resource all through there at the same grade and thickness.
However if we give the benefit of the doubt and say okay the entire mapped yednalue area will be 25m thick (generous) we're talking 4300m x 250m x 25m = 27M^3 times that by the specific gravity ~ 2.5 = 67mT @ maybe 700-800ppm. (Yes i know there are higher results but average out the table at the back put a cut-off in and see what you get. I'll need to convert the PDF to word to extract the table and can also then calculate a basket price - i will do this once i know it's ionic. Otherwise the basket is useless info.
Anyways 67mT is around 6-7Y LoM. ive stated most resources will need to be around 100mT min but ideally 200mT to yield around 15-20Y LoM.
So very short summary.
Results are in line with previous and looks good from a mined/t perspective.
Ionic is not confirmed nor is the understanding as to whether it's easily leachable. If it's easily leachable then leach it with PH4 sodium chloride or ammonium sulphate.
If they drill out the entire area and it continues to be same grade thickness etc ~60-70mT resource possible. Will need to double that IMHO to warrant a feasibility study.
First things first. Leach and met work.
Apologies for the late response i am very busy right now - and obviously these posts take a bit of time to put together.
SF2TH
(20min delay)