Most important part in this interview.
Shows the clear necessity of a profound analysis of the material.
Reference to quality and homogenity in addition.
We will see how competition will deal with a different approach not doing this deep analysis.
On paper, the flowsheet is relatively simple. But in reality, it is quite difficult to ‘crack the nut’ in terms of getting the process optimised.
It a very different game, taking it from the lab up to production scale. What we initially considered would be quite an easy thing to do has turned out to be very technically difficult; but we have managed to get there.
We have learnt a lot, and we continue to learn. The pilot plant will be the final demonstration of all that.
The skill is in the refining, that’s for sure. I don’t know how you could attempt something as innovative as we’re doing without testing it at full scale production.
We will learn so much from the pilot plant, which all feeds back into our economic studies – costs, equipment selection, and so on.
We will still be delivering our BFS in September, but we will continue to do a lot more R&D and piloting.
