Argent Minerals also caught this columnist's attention when it unveiled its latest set of drill results, which it says has expanded the mineralized footprint to the northeast at its Kempfield polymetallic deposit in NSW.
The company connected 12 reverse circulation (RC) holes at Kempfield, intersecting shallow, wide and thick zones of silver, lead and zinc mineralization up to 88m from surface in the Western Lode area and 29m from thickness and high grade. silver base metal mineralization in the northeast of the Lode 200 resource area.
The 1036m campaign was aimed at extending and defining new zones of silver-lead-zinc mineralization from the Lode 200 mineralized block and drill testing its western zone. Significant grades from the Northeast Extension include 23 ma 34.41 grams per tonne silver from 22 m in one hole and a second hole intersecting 29 ma 34.09 g/t silver, 0.14 percent of lead and 0.41 percent zinc from 50 m, including 10 m by 0.31. cent lead and 0.81 per cent zinc from 64 m.
Notable grades in the western zone include a hole intersecting 0.19 percent lead and 0.17 percent zinc from surface and 6m at 21.97 g/t silver, 0.64 per cent lead and 0.68 per cent zinc from 81 m in one hole, a second hole drilled from 88 m. at 25.23 g/t silver, 0.1 percent lead and 0.08 percent zinc from 2 m.
The Kempfield d'Argent polymetallic project is located 60km south/southwest of the giant Cadia gold and copper mining operation in central west NSW, 250km west of Sydney.
Also in NSW, following a recent extensive infill drilling program, West Perth-based gold exploration and production company Alkane Resources revealed an attractive revision to its inferred and indicated resource for its copper-gold Kaiser in the Boda district of NSW, which has increased management's confidence in its resource base.
The new assessment raised Kaiser to an impressive 213 million tonnes at 0.55 g/t gold equivalent for 3.74 million ounces, based on average grades of 0.28 g/t gold and 0.20 percent copper and graded 1.9 million ounces of gold and 0.42 million tons of copper. The new figures have increased Kaiser's indicated resource category to 89 percent of the global resource, its gold grade to 15 percent and its copper grade to 10 percent.
Alkane says that including Kaiser, the Boda district has a global resource of 796 million tonnes grading 0.58 g/t gold equivalent for 14.7 million ounces, based on grades averaging 0.33 g/t gold and 0.18 percent copper for a contained 8.3 million ounces of gold and 1.5 million tonnes of copper.
The company has carried out substantial metallurgical testing and established a simple functional flow sheet, with overall recoveries at Kaiser of 81 per cent for copper and 71 per cent for gold and at Boda an 87 per cent for copper and 81 percent for gold, with a marketable value. to concentrate
The company will use its reviewed Boda district resources in a scoping study for potential development and is expected to be published in the second quarter of the year.
West Cobar Metals last week produced its first scandium resource estimate for its Salazar critical minerals project at Newmont, 120km north-east of Esperance in WA.
The company's latest inferred scandium resource estimate under the company's JORC stands at 12 million tonnes at 103 ppm and says its preliminary metallurgical tests indicate high scandium leach recoveries of up to 81, 2 percent.
The Salazar Project is one of Australia's most advanced critical clay mineral projects, containing significant indicated and inferred rare earth mineral resources, in addition to inferred titanium dioxide and alumina mineral resources.
Almost all scandium was produced by electrolysis until around 1960 and around the same time, it came into use by the US and Soviet militaries during the Cold War period due to its lightness, period high fusion and resistant properties.
Prices for 99.99 percent pure scandium have fluctuated between US$4,000 (AU$6,085) per kilogram and US$20,000 (AU$30,424) per kilogram over the past decade.
And finally, Larvotto Resources' recent metallurgical engineering studies and tests showed that the company could double the original output of its Hillgrove antimony and gold processing plant in Hillgrove, near Armidale in NSW to over 500,000 tonnes per annum with only minimal upgrades and modifications.
The company says its capacity to produce gold and doré concentrate along with antimony concentrate could easily be increased by expanding the crusher's feed rate of 220,000 tonnes per year. A complementary scoping study of historical gold and antimony production also revealed that a higher grade gold concentrate could be produced by incorporating a new gravity separation module into the process stream, with the potential to produce a concentrate of high-grade gold of more than 150 grams. per ton of gold.
The potential improvement in gold production contrasts sharply with historical concentrate grades from previous operations, which produced only 50 g/t gold. Management says independent studies showed that even with the original Knelson concentrator, long considered the ultimate “catch-all” gold module for collecting gravity-recoverable gold, in front of the flotation circuit, the Hillgrove's original concentrates still retained about 13 percent. gravity recoverable gold, most over 40 microns (0.04 mm) in size.
In addition, about 44 percent of the remaining fine gold was less than 40 microns.
All this meant that the Knelson was not taking in all the gold it should have, almost certainly because of the fineness of the gold.
The tests also showed that further improvement in the gravity gold recovery circuit would be possible using a multi-gravity gold separator (MGS), which is a newer, less complex and less sensitive innovation than the Knelson concentrator. Management says the MGS is capable of recovering more than 70 percent of the gold from the concentrate.
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