King River achieves 99.48% pure vanadium during processing trials on Speewah ore
Date: Feb 28, 2018 |
King River Copper (ASX: KRC) emerged from a trading halt this morning with news metallurgical testing on its Speewah project ore has achieved a 99.48% pure vanadium pentoxide.
The results were part of the company’s vanadium concept study in its attempt to produce a vanadium purity between 99.5% and 99.9% from its flagship Speewah project. Test work was undertaken on ore from the Central deposit, with hydrochloric acid leach treatment resulting in 97% to 99% vanadium, 95% to 97% titanium and 96% to 98% iron from the vanadium-titanium concentrate. As part of the study, TSW Analytical is exploring various processing techniques to produce vanadium electrolyte for use in the emerging vanadium flow battery sector. TSW is also researching with Speewah ore to also generate a high purity titanium dioxide. The analyst is trialling chemical precipitation methods combined with controlling acidity, redox and temperature, which is different to the traditional salt roast or solvent extraction methods. The three-stage process produced the 99.48% purity vanadium pentoxide which limited contaminants of 0.29% iron, and 0.17% sodium. Meanwhile other metallurgical test work on Speewah ore returned a 99.5% pure titanium dioxide at the end of last month, which King River hopes to boost to 99.9% titanium dioxide. |