No idea if this is relevant to us. It is a new leaching process that apparently uses alkalis instead of acids. The result apparently is "greener": the unwanted biproducts of leaching out the zinc perhaps leaves a pile of fertiliser behind (ammonium something or other) and plants can grow on the leach pads after the mine has closed!
The company that has developed this technology is a small AIM listed company that trades at less than the cash in the bank, but the company has a terrible reputation for communicating with its shareholders satisfactorily. The Chairman apparently has no time for private investors, although the company recently did a presentation, and was apparently slagged off by some of the attendees, who were also shareholders. Not recommending it as an investment, but the process they have developed may be relevant to us. Below is an excerpt from the interims last month...
"The Company continues to believe that the outlook for the international mining industry is favourable. However, considerable rising capital and operating cost pressures prevail. This is especially true for copper production
from copper oxide deposits using the sulphuric
acid heap leaching solvent extraction and electro-winning (SX-EW) method. Sulphuric acid prices, which in some high acid consuming ores can account for over a third of cash operating costs, have risen several fold in the last few
years and are forecast to remain high for the
foreseeable future. Accordingly, it is in this environment that our AmmLeach® technology offers significant operating cost advantages for processing high acid consuming copper oxide ores.
As well as copper oxides, AmmLeach® has excellent potential for developing a new SX-EW process for producing high purity zinc metal at the mine. The zinc process has been trialled successfully on a bench scale and larger scale test-work is imminent. The AmmLeach® process
leaches common zinc oxide minerals with high extraction efficiencies and offers a potentially economic processing route for many zinc oxide deposits that are currently economically unviable.
The HyperLeach* process has been developed for the extraction of base metals, especially copper, zinc, nickel and cobalt, from sulphide ores and concentrates. This is potentially a major breakthrough for the global mining
industry as the majority of base metal sulphides are
currently concentrated on-site using froth flotation before they are shipped off site to a smelter and refinery for further processing.
Higher returns for mine owners can be generated by utilising more on-site processing to produce high value metal products at the mine at competitive operating costs and relatively low capital costs."
Add to My Watchlist
What is My Watchlist?