With the completion of metallurgical work achieving copper recovery rates of more than 95%, Elysium Resources (ASX:EYM) is ready to start a plant design for an economic ore blending process at its Burraga project in New South Wales.
Elysium marked the high recovery rates using primary in-situ material thereby completing the metallurgical testwork for all potential primary ore types at Burraga.
The results indicated that ore will be easily crushed and ground to the desired size range in a conventional crushing and ball mill circuit. Flotation response of all the fresh ore samples was excellent with high copper recovery and low reagent consumption at an optimised grind size.
Work on determining the suitability of blending the different potential ore sources economically is now set to begin.
Earlier this year, drilling at Burraga delivered copper grades as high as 2.49% across 3 metres from 106 metres depth.
Elysium targeted the project last year with an aim to restart production at the site’s historic Lloyds mine, which produced 19,443 tonnes of copper from 469,626 tonnes of ore between 1880 and 1920, then intermittently up to 1961.
This output rate implies a recovered grade of 4.1% copper.
As a result of this historic activity, there is now a tailings dump and two slag dumps of up to 350,000 tonnes, with the tailings resource estimated to contain 280,000 tonnes at 1.2% copper.
Prefeasibility assessment of the project has contemplated a net profit of A$75 million over 4.4 years of operation.
