New Talisman Gold Mines Ltd’s (ASX:NTL) test work has recovered 94% and 93.6% gold from ore samples taken from two target areas of the Talisman Mine in New Zealand.
The company’s shares are trading about 31% higher intra-day, at $0.017.
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New Talisman chief executive officer Matthew Hill said: “The completion of this test work demonstrates the successful ability to extract high-grade concentrate from the existing ore bodies without the use of any hazardous chemicals.”
Clean and environmentally friendly treatment of gold ore
New Talisman treated 75 kilograms of ore from the target areas of Mystery and Dubbo using gravity concentration and flotation methods.
Only environmentally benign reagents were used to achieve the recovery levels.
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Hill added: “From a processing perspective this is about as clean and environmentally friendly for treatment of gold ore as it gets with natural rock being reused as backfill.
“This is a key milestone for the company and allows us to develop a saleable product without the need for external parties.”
Test work examined the full processing path
Following the mining and crushing of the ore to a suitable feed size, New Talisman tested all four stages of the metallurgical process:
• Grinding of ore to a suitable size to liberate gold;
• Recovery of free milling gold in a gravity concentrator: Results show that 61.3% of gold in Dubbo ore and 81.9% of gold in Mystery ore can be recovered directly through this process;
• Flotation of the concentrator tails to recover additional gold: This process resulted in the recovery of an additional 32.7% of gold from Dubbo ore and 11.7% from Mystery ore, yielding overall recoveries of 94% and 93.6% respectively; and
• Final recovery of gold from concentrate: On exit from the flotation tanks the concentrate can either be sold directly on the market or the gold recovered on a shaker table and smelted.
Design of pilot plant is underway
New Talisman will use the results from the metallurgical test work to support its design of a pilot plant.
The results will also be used to complete engineering studies and cost estimates both for pilot test work during the bulk sampling project and to design an updated pre-feasibility study.
It is expected that the plant will be modular and scalable allowing components to be added as production volumes increase.