Ann: Major Clay Hosted Ionic Rare Earth Discovery at Mt Clere, page-123

@Megamao was busy yesterday. Stopped closely following the early stage RE players a little while back, other fish to fry and frankly I'm just no good with hot money chasing hot stocks. Invariably, traders and insiders run up the price pending news flow, then run up announcements before reading let alone understanding them. If the results are great and add value then at best the stock is fairly valued within 5 mins of news release, otherwise... well.

Happy to keep an eye out, and KTA have a decent size, thickness, strip project to work with. Valuable REO distribution is important, but critical for ICDs as posters know is recoveries and the cost of recovery (eg salt vs acid, how acidic, acid consumption etc). I scraped the results table data into a spreadsheet and converted ppm into REO according to the JORC table multipliers so we can compare apples with apples. On that note, allow me to grizzle that all these RE companies report with REO's tabulated in different orders, not just regards each other but internally between different results (eg fusion assay vs recovery table). Cynically, this looks deliberate to make direct comp's and/or understanding what is going on as difficult as possible because good stories don;t want clarity clouding the picture. Same goes for all the met work etc which never seems to have enough detail to nail down what is going on.

Image below is snapped from base of table of Mt Clere fusion REO ppm (not elemental ppm) from reported results cut by me at 400ppm REO. Bit higher than 200ppm Makuutu Resource cut but wanted to focus on 'potential ore' proper not the low grade waste (can't be bothered re-working now I notice the difference). Below that are individual RE-oxides in percentage and the same data I compiled previously from some other ICD wannabes (selected higher grade holes as released by companies) and IXR's Makuutu.



Plenty to pick apart, interestingly high CeO and lower VREO (valuable imo) at Mt Clere similar to Makuutu. Remove the elevated CeO and obviously the remaining REOs would rise in percentage to something closer to others. Early days for most except Makuutu, with Grade x VREO x Recovery being the critical revenue value drivers. TREO grade of all reported Mt Clere fusion assays is 261 ppm or 313ppm TREO. At 400ppm TREO cut average is 948ppm but that's how higher cuts work. At a lower 350ppm cut that 950ppm will drop to around the same 800ppm TREo as Makuutu, so good comp so far.

Recoveries is where it gets a bit funky. The average of reported recovery intervals by KTA (higher grades) is tabled below. 71% of TREO by my non-weighted calc's, but individual recoveries are nothing like Makuutus or general expectation.


Chart of Mt Clere WAR recoveries below shows a completely different recovery pattern to Makuutu over a range of different pH levels for an ammonia sulphate solution. Makuutu like Chinese ICD deposits have a pronounced negative Ce and to similar extent La anomaly because these lights get locked up in phosphates and carbonates which require more aggressive acidic conditions to break down. A chart of Mt Ridley (MRD) WAR recoveries is also included, very similar to Mt Clere and nothing like Makuutu...


So what's going on with recoveries and what does it mean? IMO, we are all running the risk that Weak Acid Digest Recoveries (WAR) are not actually 'weak' compared with production ammonia sulphate condition leach tests at pH=1 (or higher). What is the actual pH pf WAR digest? Sure it is weaker than orange, fuming, strip your face off at distance AR proper... partial digest it might be but how weak is weak?

Nobody says clearly, the only evidence I have found is in the MRD WAR release " AR means Weak aqua regia acid, a mix of 1 molar hydrochloric acid (HCl) and 1 molar nitric acid (HNO3)."... and 1M HCl and HNO3 have a pH=0, mix them 1:1 and the pH still =0. Remember, the pH scale is logarithmic, meaning so pH=0 is 10 times more acidic than pH=1... Strong acids like Aqua Regia can me many times stronger than 1M (1 molar) such as HCl which is "fuming/concentrated HCl 37% is 12 molar".. and 12M HCl has a pH -1.08 (ie 10 times more acidic than 1M HCl).

If my read is correct, WAR recoveries are under conditions 10 times more acidic than pH=1 with ammonia salt the Makuutu recovery chart shows. Despite most ICD explorers happy to declare recoveries for "weak Aqua Regia digest" in reality the it is not weak at all compared to realistic leach solutions. The more acidic WAR will likely dissolve LA, Ce and other REO's that remain locked up in phosphates and carbonates under more benign ammonia salt with pH=1 conditions. True ICD's in china operate closer to pH=3 or 4 because REO's are not locked up in secondary 'colloidal' minerals (including at Makuutu) but are truly just ionically bonded to clays and thus liberated by a simple ammonia salt leach.

Dropping the pH=1 cost money for H2SO4 acid addition, and possibly a lot more money when there is high levels of calcium and carbonates keep chewing up the acid fast as you can pour it on (eg AR3 Koppamurra project). IMHO, there is much uncertainty and misleading information released by ICD explorers in an effort to talk up their potential. Recovery proof is only in proper lab tested, bulk composites, under controlled and realistic leach solution alternatives including acid consumption etc. Makuutu has done that work and although it requires considerable H2SO4 addition to break down REO's in colloidal minerals the acid consumption cost vs extra recovery are all facts that distill out in whatever operating margins etc.

Early days, has potential, waiting on critical recovery leach tests, WAR doesn;t mean a great deal imo, stand to be corrected if I'm in error.

Cheers