G'day Mac,Hypothetically its a hard one to judge without any...

G'day Mac,

Hypothetically its a hard one to judge without any data or constraints.

Even a reasonably low ash coal like the one you suggest can have terrible yield results.

It comes down to the amount of middlings (particles with similar densities that are near the cut point of your density separation) and how well you can set your cut point in relation to the feed stock coming through. Lots of middlings with a coal of variable ash is really hard to wash without loosing a lot of product. It also depends what the ash is. Even small amounts of fine grained clay can be difficult to put through a wash plant as the first step is to size the feed through screens so it can be dealt with efficiently. So clay can clog this up and overload the fines circuits.

At the end of the day it comes down to the combination of factors such as mining cost, product yield and product price.

A few boxes are ticked... i.e. rail is nearby, water should be available due to the proximity of other wash plants. Depth of cover looks good for the gross strip ratios.

We will see what the other factors are in the coming months.

Gaz