PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Reed Resources would launch a prefeasibility study (PFS) to assess the technical feasibility of a hard rock titanium mining and processing operation at its Barrambie project, in Western Australia, following a successful mini pilot-scale testwork programme.
The company said on Tuesday that the 10 kg/d plant had been aimed at testing and demonstrating the successful operation of each of the major unit operations of the proprietary flow sheet on a continuous basis, and confirmed that the Barrambie project had the potential to be a globally significant lowest-quartile cost titanium dioxide producer.
“Achieving this milestone is another important step forward in the development of Barrambie into a low-cost, long-term multi-commodity project,” said Reed MD Chris Reed.
A previously completed scoping study predicted that the project could deliver about 13 000 t/y of titanium dioxide and 300 t of vanadium oxide. Barrambie was expected to have a life-of-mine of about 27 years, sourcing its ore from a mineral resource of 47.2-million tonnes, grading 22.18% titanium dioxide and 0.63% vanadium oxide.
Reed said that the PFS would investigate the construction of a mineral processing facility to treat run-of-mine (RoM) ore from Barrambie. The RoM ore would be crushed and screened on site, and would be trucked to a processing facility near Geraldton, with a nominal capacity of 200 000 t/y, where high-purity titanium, vanadium and iron compounds would be produced.
The PFS was scheduled for completion in the March quarter of next year.